


Rocket Queen

by grohiik



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: All Kinds of Ladies, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anthea is Sebastian Moran, Badass Women, Coda to Entire Series, Demisexuality, Everyone Underestimates Molly Hooper, F/M, Female Sebastian Moran, Love at First Sight, M/M, Moran is not bitter, Numerous Fight Club References, Numerous Music/Literature References, Psychopaths In Love, Unhealthy Relationships, Vapid Women, spoilers for absolutely everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-14 21:59:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11217096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grohiik/pseuds/grohiik
Summary: "Do you remember, or were you too focused on Jim? I was there when you met Jim Moriarty. I was there when you met Mycroft Holmes. I've always been there. In the background. Usually, I was texting. You probably didn't notice." Sabine Moran often wondered if being a man would have been easier. Certainly, juggling two bosses, a number of temperamental sociopaths, and dealing with sexism as a hired muscle would be easier if she were male. Funny how life turns out.





	1. [Part One] Fledgling

**Author's Note:**

> Parts of this fic were inspired by Very British Problems, which is a show I highly recommend. It helped me nail dialogue in some parts as well as adding some more depth and, well, Britishness-- or so I hope. On another technical note, everyone's ages are the same as their actors, except Mycroft, whose apparent age in flashbacks is younger than Mark Gattiss' actual age.
> 
> Though this fic is linear, I did not write it in a linear fashion. I jumped back and forth over and over again with both new writing and editing, revising it endlessly and building in detail. This means that I hopefully smoothed out all of the rough edges. I certainly tried. This fic is COMPLETE at about 37,000 words and has been divided into four parts, one of which will be posted every week, perhaps sooner depending on response.
> 
> This fic has a playlist. Of course it does. As you read it, you'll understand why. I have them hyperlinked where relevant.

* * *

 

_Here I am_

_And you're a Rocket Queen, oh yeah_

_I might be too much_

_But honey you're a bit obscene_

 

[Rocket Queen - Guns'n'Roses](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAMT-ES_jHc)

 

**PART ONE: Fledgling**

 

**i. Sabine Moran**

[It was the country song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPHnadJ-0hE) that she ended up focusing on, not the pain. She hated Americans whole-heartedly in that moment, firm in the knowledge that her father's opinion had always been a correct one. It was perhaps the only time she was willing to admit he was right. Americans were ridiculous, uncouth, rude, disgusting, awful-- and the worst part of Americans existing was that they had invented this bloody awful song for her to have to listen to when she was in such pain.

Sabine Moran had always believed that caring was an advantage. Her emotions gave her strength, and even the pain she felt now was worth it. In secondary school, when she was a prim and proper public school girl with shiny hair and teeth, her emotions had safely led her away from the sillier boys and the lies that had entangled so many of her classmates. She found the boys dull, and had hated being pinned down to just one way of being or acting. She liked playing football _and_ doing her hair. She had enjoyed being brilliant _and_ being pretty.

She felt neither brilliant nor pretty now.

"Can you turn that bloody thing off?" she asked the nurse sharply. The country song jangled jauntily on, making the speakers give a tinny screech.

The woman gave her a flat, unimpressed look. "I don't control the music, Group Captain," she said. She deposited a fresh blanket at Moran's bedside and adjusted the IV that was dripping into her arm. "Any other requests?"

Moran turned away.

Her father, Lord Augustus Moran, had only wanted her to be a trophy, something beautiful that he could trot out in front of his colleagues for them to admire. But Moran hadn't been born to be a trophy. Instead of fainting when faced with fear, like the girls in her class, adrenaline made her mind clearer, focused her. It was why she joined the military at the tender age of eighteen, a fact which her father had been horrified by-- that any child of his should be a member of the Royal Air Force, much less that his daughter should, was a source of great embarrassment for him. For Moran, it was a consolation prize for what she really wanted to do: be a sniper.

It wasn't every little girl's dream to be a sniper. It was hardly anyone's dream, even if they eventually became one. But Moran grew up obsessed with movies about American mobsters, shooting each other point-blank in the local Italian eateries. Whenever the nanny wasn't watching, she snuck down to the cinema to watch classic men in business suits call hits on one another calmly, politely, and with a knife in one hand as they cut their steaks with seething menace. When boys bothered her in school, she kneed them in the groin and held her fingers to their temples: "Bang!" she would whisper, staring into their tear-filled eyes. Eventually, they stopped bothering her altogether.

The psychiatrist that her father had forced on her after her mother had left said that she had psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies. Her father had fired him immediately.

It was probably why she hated doctors even now. Moran watched the doctors pass in the hallway of the medical center, trying to distract herself from the music on the radio. Even the doctors here were nut brown with their tans, their faces weathered by the heat and glare of the Iraqi sun.

"Is someone ever going to update me on my condition?" she called out, struggling to sit up despite the burn in her chest.

They barely looked at her before moving on.

Of course, even if it wasn't her first choice, she had been somewhat enamoured of the idea of female pilots, of the idea of fighting for Queen and country in the only way she could, even though she was a woman and no one thought that she could have any worthwhile contribution. Yet the fact that she couldn't do the down and dirty work in the trenches, couldn't fight the hard-won fights that would make her name ring through the halls of history-- it burned something deep inside her. She was an excellent marksman-- could shoot anything, from any distance-- she was brilliant, she was beautiful. And the military still kept her out of the action as much as possible. The men called her names because she was pretty, tried to get her to fuck them at every opportunity, and one had once tried to corner in her in the showers. One incident was all it took before they started calling her a bitch. Of course, the man who'd tried to corner her had lost one of his balls, so she hadn't expected anything else.

Perhaps the fact that she was a bitch was why she had gotten shot down and was currently lying, wrecked, in an army hospital in the middle of Iraq. Perhaps that was why she was being forced to suffer the song playing on the radio at her bedside: " _I don't know the difference between Iraq and Iran_."

She, naturally, knew perfectly well the difference between Iraq and Iran. She had graduated at the top of her class and had a basic grasp of geography, unlike the singer of the song. It was one of the reasons that she found American country music so… _insipid_ , so _boring_ that she was going out of her mind. She would have killed to have a gun at hand to shoot the blasted thing, but no one was willing to give her a gun.

Then again, she had just shot down quite a few things that she had not been, strictly speaking, told to shoot down. Her superiors had given her the orders to stay; instead, she had gone. She had seen the situation and had known that if they hadn't completed orders then, there would be no other chance-- it was then, or never. A man would have been promoted for this transgression. As a woman, she was dishonorably discharged and was going to be sent home. She was not pleased.

"Group Captain Moran." It was one of the doctors, finally, all military fatigues and disapproval. Clearly, what she had done had gotten around. She just stared at him, the twang of a guitar ringing in her ears, and tried to place him. Yuri? Gorshev? Something Slavic. She didn't know him, exactly, but she'd had her hand in for several operations-- a couple of the gambling rings on base, a handful of letters she had helped smuggle past the censors-- and she was sure he had seen him somehow. "Your… incident unfortunately led to your two fellow pilots dying, as I'm sure you're aware. You're lucky to have escaped as unscathed as you did. Your currently have two broken ribs and a fractured pelvis. Your left wrist is sprained, and you have a severe laceration to your chest, which we have mended to the best of our abilities, but it will scar."

"So I suppose that I'll have to avoid low-cut dresses for the time being," Moran quipped.

"That would be your prerogative," Doctor… Nikolay, his name was Nikolay, said. "I am here to tell you that you're currently stable enough to send home."

"And within a month, I'm sure the legal matters will be sorted out and I'll be a citizen again." Moran made a face.

" _Did you open your eyes, hope it never happened, close your eyes and not go to sleep?"_ crooned the radio.

"A man would have been given a commendation," she said. She wasn't bitter at all.

 

* * *

 

To reward her for no longer being part of the RAF, Lord Moran had given her a posh apartment in Belgravia. It was a beautiful space. The front of the building had a stark white stucco façade, golden-brown staircases, and a balcony. The inside was all white as well. Her spending budget to decorate further was enormous; her father was pleased to sweep the whole "military adventure" under the rug.

Moran hated it. She was pleased to be out of his house and further away from his judgment, but she knew the kind of woman he wanted her to be. A silly girl, who would tumble in and out of Belgravia with arms full of shopping bags, kick off her heels as she entered her posh flat, and change into some slinky black dress to appear on a gentleman's arm as they toured parties all over London. Mia Hemswick from school was just like that. Moran had visited with the girl-- and she was a girl, not a woman-- right after she had come back from Iraq. She had still been bruised and broken, but Mia had given her a ring one afternoon and she had felt obliged to respond. Mia had told her all about the marriage of Elizabeth Barnes-Lovell to Gerald Campbell and what a coup is was for the man to land someone as well-blooded as Elizabeth Barnes-Lovell. Moran had felt her brain cells dying as Mia spoke, because didn't Mia realise that Moran just didn't _care_?

"Oh, that's really lovely," Moran said, barely listening but still British, thank you very much. "How lovely for them both. Sorry, really, but are you hot as well?"

Mia laughed. "Oh no, I'm really quite fine! You're wearing all those layers, dear."

"Oh, sorry. Really. Must just be me then."

Moran had smiled, but she hadn't taken off her sweater. Her shirt wasn't cut quite right, and without the sweater, Mia would have been able to see the scar on her chest, livid and twisted in the daylight. Sometimes, it felt like that scarlet A that Hawthorne was always whinging on about-- another American, sent to torture Moran with his Puritan ideals. A man might have been given a commendation, and it wasn't _fair_ , but better to be in the RAF than in Belgravia.

"Of course, their new flat is _right_ next to that stuffy Holmes bloke."

"Holmes?" Moran couldn't recall the name from any of her old circles.

"Oh, right, a bit after your time. I suppose you had already left by the time he started popping about." Mia gave a tittering laugh that made Moran cringe inside. "Mycroft Holmes. He's a mystery, that one. Of course, the Holmeses have been around since the 1700s at least, but the family hasn't lived in London in ages. They have the Musgrave House in Sussex, or did until that dreadful fire. Anyway, we all rather assumed they'd lost their money somehow, but apparently not. He dresses _quite_ nicely. He wears a ring, but I've never seen anyone in his house but him."

"Not that you spend all your time looking, I'm sure."

"Of course! He does something in government, always has black cars around. Very mysterious," she repeated.

Moran resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "This has been a lovely visit, Mia," she said instead, leadingly.

Mia patted her on the hand, her long, dark red fingernails clicking against the table. "Oh, no worries, love. I have plenty of time and I wanted to see you-- this wasn't a problem at all!" She hesitated. "A shame, about your hair. So short now." She tutted lightly.

Moran sighed. "Funny thing is about hair, it grows." Also funny how she hadn't told Mia that she thought it would be a 'problem' to spend time with her.

"Oh! Yes!" Mia drew back, startled by the harsh tone. "Really."

"I really must be going."

"So soon!"

It took another twenty minutes for Moran to manage to extricate herself, and then it was back to the flat. She stared inside at the white interior and nearly turned around again. Even a bed-sit would be better than this… [Barbie house](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyhrYis509A). It was positively barbaric. It set the women's rights movement back by at least a year, just existing for washed-up rich girls like her throw tea parties in.

She had "Barbie Girl" by Aqua stuck in her head now, which she firmly blamed on her father.

"I am Group Captain Sabine Moran," she said out loud, still standing in the doorway, "and I shan't be defeated by a flat in Belgravia."

 

* * *

  

She ended up actually using the money her father had set up for decorating. She put in ridiculously plush, multi-colored throw rugs all over the floor, and hung Bohemian tapestries on the walls. She did the bathroom up in mosaic and left her make-up lying on the counters, something she had never been able to do at the military or at home. She left lurid novels in stacks by her bedside and layered them with the latest magazines on guns. She put pictures of Billy Idol, AC/DC, and Queen up on the walls, and ever-so-carelessly painted a pair of red lips on the wall of her bedroom. She went stir-crazy and watched Rocky Horror on repeat for two days straight, scratching at her scar like making it bleed would make it go away.

As soon as her chest healed, she was at the shooting range every day, trading Louboutins for Doc Martens again. She had perfect aim, still, but it was so unbearably dull to shoot at a target that just stood there and didn't move at all. The worst thing was when she had to leave the range and she was still bored. She would walk through all the bad areas in London, tracing the paths that the homeless took, skirting around wild-haired junkies, daring someone to take a shot.

It didn't take long for someone to take a shot. It was late one evening and Moran was getting home from the opera. She had gone with a group of friends-- dreadful people, really-- and though they had all called a cabbie, she had decided to take a walk back. She was in a dress and a pair of heels so high that it had taken her no more than a moment to take them off and carry them in her hand. Her feet would get black from the streets, and she had a fair chance of stepping on glass, but as long as she was careful, she was sure she could make it. Of course, she was a touch drunk, so she was perhaps more self-confident than was wise.

After a few minutes of walking, she had focused so closely on making sure she didn't step on anything that she nearly ran into a man. He cursed loudly, then reached out to steady her. She looked up.

He was angry, clearly, with dark hair and eyes. In heels, she would have been taller than him, but as it was they were of a height. He had a lovely suit-- really, just lovely, all dark lapels and tapered lines, and a tie that had little silver sickles all over it. His cuff links were skulls. She assessed all this in barely a moment, accustomed as she was to having to assess clothing.

Moran didn't believe in love at first sight. She just didn't.

"You should watch where you're going if you don't want to lose your head," the man snapped.

Moran raised an eyebrow. He was Irish, with a sort of bored drawl that made elongated all of his vowels in a way that made his voice seem deadly soft. "Really, now? You think you could find it from down there?"

He glared at her. "What, no 'sorry'? No apologies for nearly killing me?"

She smiled, and simpered, affecting the same tone as Mia and her ilk. "Oh, sorry, dreadfully sorry, sir. You're all right? My Daddy will take care of your suit if you need to send it round for a cleaning. Oh dear. Sorry. Sorry."

He barked a laugh. "Oh, you're actually clever. Good luck." He walked away then, a bit of a swagger in his step. He wasn't wearing socks in his fourteen-hundred pound loafers. She shook her head and continued down the street, only to be met with three toughs.

"Oh, so this is what he meant by 'good luck,' then?" she said as the men approached.

"What is she on about?" the one on her left asked another.

"Who cares?" was his reply. "Why are you out on such a dark night, miss? Should have stayed home."

"Oh please," Moran said, dropping her purse. "I am not a little girl, and you are not a wolf, so let's get on with it."

She laid them out in about five minutes. She was getting rusty. She looked with dismay at the bodies, which were more or less still breathing, but she had hit one of them in the temple with the heel of her shoe and he was fading fast. Maybe she really would have to call Lord Moran to fix it, and he would give her the most demeaning look, as if she only ever lived down to expectations. She crouched next to him, a frown on her face. It was most inconvenient. Also, she might be in shock.

"That was brilliant. Just top notch."

Moran flung her remaining heel at the voice before she even realised who had spoken, and she learned only after her shoe bounced off his forehead that it was the man from earlier.

"Now I really do apologise," she said, rubbing her forehead. Her hair was still too short, but it had grown out and was almost to her shoulders now; she brushed it back from her face and looked at him. He still had a strange, intense look about his face. His eyes were too big for his face, but it didn't make him look innocent. It made him look dangerous.

"Military training, then," he said. He walked closer, holding her shoe like a demented Prince Charming. "They don't let women in close combat, you're definitely not a medic, and I doubt you would stand a secretarial position-- must be the RAF. Hint of Scottish accent, but long ago, almost trained out of you. Moved to London when you were… nine? No, ten. Rich background, I would say, but not new rich. The way you hold your shoulders screams old money, and you live in Belgravia. Nice place, Belgravia. Very… white." He handed her back the shoe, and his hand lingered against hers.

Moran made a face and tried not to be disconcerted. "Like a hospital room, really. You're spot on. Sabine Moran, ex-Group Captain at your service. Now, unless you want to call this in about the thug currently bleeding out, I suggest that we both leave."

"And why wouldn't I call this in? I'm an upstanding citizen, after all. Just look at my suit."

She snorted. Her father would have slapped her for making such an indelicate noise, or more correctly, would have paid a nanny to slap her. "I am looking at your suit. No man wears a suit that expensive unless he's paid in blood at some point. It's polite manners at this point to introduce yourself, you know."

He smiled, all shark teeth and angel eyes. "Jim Moriarty. _Hiiii_."

 

**ii. Jim Moriarty**

He followed her home that night. More correctly, he called up a car, biting an order into his phone before transfixing her with his eyes. She stood in the alley with her bloody shoes in her hands, bare feet, and watched the snap of his eyes and the animated jerk of his chin as the black car rolled up.

"Get in," he said, opening the car door and gesturing her inside.

"You must be kidding." She wanted to cross her arms, but didn't want to get blood from her shoes on her dress. At that thought, she looked down and, realizing that she was covered in a splatter anyway, crossed her arms. "I just escaped three thugs. Do you think I want to enter an enclosed space with another one?"

"Did it seem like I was giving you a choice?" He crooned out the words, leaning closer to her. "One hint," he whispered in her ear, breath kissing her neck, "I _waaa-sn't_. Now get in, before I leave you in the road with the rest of the trash."

She didn't think he was talking about leaving her to make her own way home. She was fairly certain he meant leave her dead. She huffed at him, irritated and a little afraid, and got in the car.

He smiled brightly at her once they were inside the car and reached into the bar, drawing out two glasses and a bottle of champagne. "Want to celebrate, darling?" he asked. [Queen was playing in the speakers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04854XqcfCY), almost too loud for regular conversation.

"Celebrate what?" she asked crossly. She adjusted the fit of her shrug, briefly revealing the scar in all its lurid glory. His eyes were drawn to it instantly, devouring everything she deigned to reveal.

"Why, the beginning of a wonderful partnership." He popped the bottle, and it sounded like a shot fired.

"How could I possibly be of any use to… whatever you are?" She was under no delusions. She had stepped into something more criminal than she was really prepared for, juvenile love of mob movies aside. She had been a good girl all her life; even rebelling by joining the army was good, even disobeying those orders and being discharged was because she thought it was _right_ , not because she wanted to do something bad. Of course, she had just killed a man. She was still waiting to feel guilty, but she had never become guilty for defending herself before and didn't really want to start now. Guilt, her father would say, wasn't something that Morans _did_. "Why do you think I would want to be of use to whatever you are?"

"Second question _fi_ -rst," Moriarty said, sing-song, as he poured the champagne. "You are terribly bored, aren't you? You walk alleys alone at night. You don't try to run from fights-- you pick them. And you killed a man and you don't even care. Oh girl, way to turn. Me. On." He fanned himself. "First question second, I need interesting people more than I need competent ones. Of course, if you fail to be competent, you will be killed, but being interesting counts for a lot with me."

She took the glass he held out to her and studied him over the rim of it. "You wish to hire me because I have failed to be dull."

 "Hole in one, we _HAVE_ a winner." He smiled again, teeth and flash, and knocked back his champagne like it was a shot of whiskey.

She drank a sip from her own. "All right," she said. "What do I have to lose? After all, I am as bored as you said, and you're the most interesting person I've met, at least since I came back from Iraq, possibly ever. What will I be doing?"

He poured himself more champagne and clinked their glasses with the exuberance of a child. "Cheers, sweetheart. I'm sure I can come up with something for you. You'll be like my… sidekick. Robin to my Batman. Harley to my Joker."

"I always preferred Poison Ivy myself." The car slowed to a stop in front of her flat. She never told him where it was, but she somehow wasn't surprised. She didn't get out, but instead took another sip.

He dug a remote out of the seat and abruptly, [the radio was blaring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRfRITVdz4k), " _She comes on like a rose, but everybody knows. She'll get you in Dutch. You can look but you better not touch. Poison ivy, poison ivy…."_

It surprised a laugh out. When she drained the last of her champagne and set down the glass, he reached out a hand to her. "You'll work for me then, my interesting arsenic?"

"I don't come cheap," she teased, the champagne maybe going to her head. But Moriarty seemed to like it, taking her hand in his.

"You'll call me Jim," he decided. "How novel." He looked endlessly pleased with himself. She shook her head.

"Jim, then," she said. "But if you call me Sabine, I'll toss the champagne bottle at your head. I would think my mother was still on the pain medicine when she named me if I didn't know perfectly well my name is my father's fault."

"Moran and Moriarty. Oh, this _is_ the start of something special."

 

* * *

 

With Jim, nothing was boring, ever. Instead of a whirlwind of parties with her friends, Moran started going to a whirlwind of parties with Jim. She was near him at every event, "his poisonous flower," as he put it. When someone tried to kill or threaten him, she would slip up behind them with a drugged drink, and smile. No one paid much attention when she smiled, and often conveniently needed to wet their throats. They would wake up in an interrogation room with one of Jim's men, who she saw rarely and who all seemed to fear her without her needing to do anything.

When the meetings were private, she carried a gun, which she found much more satisfying than any of the subtler methods. She hated to be conventional. When he caught wind of her abilities with long-range rifles, hard-won and mostly self-taught, Jim was only more delighted. He sent her all over the world to learn from the best snipers until she was good enough to be called one of them, and even the first time she shot someone in the head from over a thousand yards away, she never felt guilty.

"Guilt is for losers, darling, and we're winners!" Jim said when she mentioned it, spinning her around in his arms until she elbowed him in the ribs.

Moran wasn't in love. She wasn't sure she believed in it. But she wasn't _not_ in love either.

The best thing, the absolute best thing, was when Lord Moran came popping round, fresh from Parliament and all in his suit, and Jim happened to be in her apartment with a mission. Her father had barely knocked, since he considered any flat he paid for more or less his to come and go in as he pleased.

Moran hadn't yelled, like she wanted to. She hadn't thrown him out or thrown anything against the wall, since she wasn't a child and she could hold her temper. She smiled. "Daddy, this is my boyfriend, Jim. Jim, this is my father, Lord Augustus Moran."

"Wonderful to meet you, sir, really. Your daughter is just lovely."

Lord Moran had taken one look at Jim's smile, at Moran's hand hastily linked into his arm with her fingertips obscuring one of Jim's bloody-dagger cuff links, and had sighed a sigh of relief. "Nice to meet you as well. I was starting to worry about this one, living all alone."

"Well, now she has me," Jim had said, all charm. When her father had left, he burst out laughing. "He thought you were a lesbian, you know. Started to wonder why you weren't dating."

Moran rolled her eyes and started to play with her mobile, loading up the latest information that Jim had sent her. "Really. I'm somehow not surprised. Mum took a long holiday a decade ago with the housekeeper-- still hasn't returned from it. He must have thought it would run in the blood. His own fault for marrying a Scot, as I assure you he's told me half a million times."

"Don't be melodramatic, dear. It's _boring_."

"I wouldn't want to be boring." She linked their arms again. "Now, tell me, Jim. How can I fix this horrible drug dealer in Peru for you?"

"Up for a holiday?"

"It is _so_ difficult getting a tan in London. There's positively no sun at all!"

 

* * *

 

Jim wasn't even a little self-conscious about his height, so Moran wore heels when she needed to seduce and boots when she needed to shoot. As the years passed, there was less call for her to be with Jim at parties, seducing idiots, and more call for her to practice shooting in distant locales.

"There's always scads of pretty girls, new ones every year," Jim said, "but there's very few women with sniper skills like yours. They never even see you coming."

"That's the point of a sniper, sir," she said flatly.

He laughed at her, eyes sparkling, and she barely resisted kissing him. It would be so boring to sleep with your boss, so instead, she made a habit of fucking a man in every country she visited. She kept a map in her bedroom in Belgravia, posted on the wall across from the one with the painted lips. She had different colored pins depending on how good it was stuck in place. If anyone knew about it, she was sure to be called a slut because she'd had sex on all seven continents, but that was their problem. She didn't really want _sex_ , exactly. She just liked the power of it, the power of having whoever she wanted with the bat of an eyelash.

She didn't know all the details of Moriarty's operations. She probably knew very few of the details, to be honest. He consulted with people who wanted to do crimes on the best way for them to do it. Very few people knew who he was. He was actually usually just hunched over a computer, and his legwork was usually just him gathering information to help other criminals for a price. Next to no one saw him in person, if they lived more than 24 hours. As far as she knew, she was his only permanent staff-- everyone else was mercenaries hired through intermediaries.

When she asked him again what he saw in her, why he had chosen her, all he said was, "You looked _bored_ , darling, and you had just killed a man. What was I to do?"

Moran began to consider the possibility that there was something very wrong with her, but it was probably the rest of the world instead. If people didn't want to die, maybe they shouldn't be so stupid, after all.

One afternoon, she was in her flat with Jim. It was always her flat they were in, never his. Moran wasn't sure he actually lived anywhere. It seemed like all he did was work and exist, a bogeyman to the criminals of the world. She had seen him eat, but only when the food cost more than most people's rent. He might actually live with her, as far as she knew. He did have some clothes there, and had taken a shower at hers more than once.

She had the paper open and was lying on the couch, her slippered feet flung over one of the arms. "The hothead, the one in East End. Might need a talking to again," she said absently, reading through the articles.

He grunted at her, trying to affix two wires together. He had taken to soldering computers in his spare time. Nothing had exploded yet, but she was expecting a robot army at any minute.

"Apparently he blew something up, a sandwich shop. And my cousin Fitz is marrying again, some little blonde girl. Bit younger than me. Marriage announcement is just in the papers today."

He grunted again, fidgeting with wires.

"Advert now, something about sex toys. Always wondered how you'd look with a great black dildo up your bum, sir."

He looked up at her, horrified. "Really, now. A sex advert in _The Times_. Don't be vulgar, Sabine."

She smiled at him, all teeth.

"There's going to be a man who will appear in your flat any day now," Jim said abruptly. She blinked, taking her feet off the arm of the couch. "You somehow managed to get on his radar-- maybe the frequent trips in and out of country, maybe just your background. He'll try to intimidate you, ask you to work for him."

"Don't I already have a boss?"

He smiled proudly at her. "Yes, you do. But isn't two always better than one? Especially when they're at odds, poor souls."

"So I'm to spy on him." Moran considered it for a moment. "I assume this is more… legitimate than my work with you? So I can actually say that I have a job and that I'm not just a useless dilettante?"

"As much as he allows you to say, certainly. He'll claim he's just a minor civil servant, at first, but he's the second most dangerous man you'll ever meet."

"I do love dangerous men," she agreed.

"I'll be coming by less frequently. He'll become suspicious if I keep tampering with his CCTV on your flat, so we should try to avoid that."

That made her narrow her eyes, sitting up a bit. "I don't want you to stop coming about, boss."

"Too bad, so sad." He paused. "I'm trusting you here, Moran."

Moran looked at him. He was probably playing her, but she could never tell whether he was actually lying or whether he actually did change emotions and opinions that quickly. She didn't love dangerous men as much as she loved _interesting_ ones, she supposed. She valued the quick-thinkers, people of action who did more than aspire to tea with the Queen.

"Bollocks," she grumbled, but she settled down on the couch and picked up her paper again.

 

**iii. Mycroft Holmes**

The weeks that followed were the first time in three years that Moran's every waking moment hadn't been filled by Jim in one way or another. Even when she hadn't been with him, he had blown her phone up with ridiculous texts, occasionally ordering her to bring him the most obscure things-- albums, art, stationary-- so that he could start some new project to alleviate his boredom. In the weeks without jobs, without Jim, she went back to being mind-numbingly frustrated with her life. It got to the point where she stomped out of Belgravia and spent an unsatisfying hour at the shooting range, nearly putting a bullet in the proprietor's forehead when he tried to cop a feel. When she got back to her flat, tossing down her gear beside the front table, she noticed the figure standing in the middle of her sitting room.

"Are you serious?" she asked him. The man blinked at her, looking a bit shocked. He was very tall, and a bit heavy, with ginger hair and-- "Does that umbrella have a sword in it? Be honest."

She shook her head at him, rolling her eyes as she dug through her purse.

"I wouldn't do that, Miss Moran."

She flashed him a look, bypassing the gun to take a compact from her purse, quickly checking her makeup and a few of the corners where extra muscle could possibly be hiding. "Good, because neither would I," she said. "Drop the 'miss,' or I'll be forced to have my father hide a rather messy accident, and it's dreadfully difficult to get stains out of all this white. Who are you and why have you broken into my flat?"

"My name," he said gravely, hand curling around the crook of his umbrella, "is Mycroft Holmes. We have--"

She giggled, then clapped a hand over her mouth to cover it. She lowered in, fighting to keep the glee out of her expression as she tossed her compact back into her purse. "Now that's just a ridiculous name. You're one of those Holmes boys that Mia Hemswick keeps going on about? She says you've got a posh car-- probably a secret squirrel or something, I would reckon, given your entrance into my flat." She felt fairly certain that this was the man Jim had told her about, and set her purse-- and the gun-- down.

"You're the one who's been having those well-meaning gentleman watching me from across the square. Very rude, and I think one of them is trying to catch me naked. You might want to have a word with him about that."

"Miss Moran, if you could restrain yourself for one blessed moment," Holmes snapped, "then you might actually learn the reason of my visit."

She crossed over to the couch and sat on it, looking up at him with quirked eyebrows. "Please, sit, Mr. Holmes," she said, gesturing to the chair across from her. "I assume you're here to either kill me or offer me a job. I just don't know why. I didn't do particularly well in the military, and since, I've done very little besides shop."

"And leave the country no less than twenty-six times that we know of, to some very strange locales." He sat, smiling genially at her now. "That reminds me, happy birthday, my dear."

"Thank you," she said. Yesterday had been her twenty-sixth birthday. She would have to make a note to Jim that he would have to take her out, as an apology for putting her through this. Struggling to bring her society manners to the fore, she pondered Holmes' face for a moment. He was lovely, in an odd way. It wasn't so much his face as it was his manner, all poise, brilliance, and aggression. He might even be smarter than Jim, but she would bet that he was far more predictable. It was why her boss would win in the end, she was sure.

"You are correct. We have been observing you. Why have you been leaving the country so frequently, Miss Moran?"

"No 'miss,' please," Moran said. "I hate it. I much would have preferred to have been born a man and not called 'miss' all the time. Of course, my father says he would have saddled me with the name Sebastian Augustus, which would have probably ensured me only pulling ditzy idiots like Mia." His face was starting to get stormy again, so she quickly added, "All right, sorry. I've had a rather rough day. Couple of weeks, rather. I've been doing some freelance work, as I'm sure you're aware." It was the cover story she and Jim had come up with, close enough to the real thing to still look fishy without actually being the whole bloody truth. "Nothing too serious. Just some information gathering for interested parties. My time in the military ensures that I am more or less safe, and my personal background and appearance often causes people to give the information to me without realizing. How does this concern the government? It's fishy, I'll grant you, but not illegal."

"Miss Moran-- I hate the nonsense of calling you just 'Moran'; won't Sabine do?"

"I'm not fond of my first name, either," she admitted.

"Well, then chose another! By god." He pinched the bridge of his nose, heaving a sigh. "Moran, I am in need of an assistant."

Funny way of giving someone a job offer. "And why should I give up my lovely, jet-setting job to work as your PA?"

"I guarantee you'll find it intriguing." Like Jim, Holmes' voice was like a melody, tripping down over the words to linger over the word "intriguing" like it was a state secret. Moran's eyelids lowered as it hummed in her blood. "I occupy a minor position in the government," he continued, "with the Ministry of Transport, which is how I first noticed your movements in and out of the country." Moran wasn't quite sure that was what the Ministry of Transport _did_ , but she already suspected him of lying anyway. "You'll get to travel a bit less, but it will be more dangerous."

"Dangerous?" Despite herself, it was interesting. If she had been living without Jim all this time, the offer would have been a boon, and Mycroft Holmes would have been her savior instead of Jim.

Noting her interest, he smiled. "Tremendously so."

She frowned, twisting the dog tags she still wore around her neck. "This whole thing is still confusing. What exactly do you need me to _do_? If it's answering phones and running around for your tea, my current employment doesn't involve that and I have no desire to take it up." Though, she had answered phones and gotten tea for Jim more than once. She had thrown it at him more than once too. He had threatened to cut off her ear, but when she just looked at him, he had burst out laughing, so he was just joking. Probably. What was life without danger?

"I have recently received a promotion of sorts. That promotion means that I have to juggle quite a few commitments. One of my commitments is the monitoring of the CCTV network in several flagged locations. Others include meeting with several officials to discuss certain events in discreet locations. I can't possibly say more until you take the job, Miss-- Moran."

"Will I have to wear heels?"

"In all probability, yes. For extremely long hours. But I keep a masseuse on staff."

"And if I agree to work for you, but I don't like it, will I meet some quiet and civilized end, or do I get to keep my head?"

"You are, of course, free to leave at any time. I can't guarantee you'll get to keep your memories of your time with me, though."

Her eyes widened. "No, really? You can do that?" She couldn't _wait_ to tell Jim. He would find it hilarious. "Yes, then. Sign me up."

He rose to his feet. "A car will be round for you next Monday. Please don't make me regret this, Moran. And try to keep a tighter lip on yourself around the office. You've been more… loquacious than I was given to suspect."

"This wasn't an interview; you sought me out and broke into my house," she pointed out, standing as well. "And I know how to change between my military manners and my society ones. Don't treat me like a child, and we'll get along just fine, Mr. Holmes."

"Mycroft, please," he said. "Good night, Moran."

Jim rang her phone just half a moment after Holmes left the flat. She knew it was him, since he regularly changed all the ringtones on her phone and had set his own to scream: _[I'm too sexy shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKy71O0eYXU). _ She was sure he did it so she would pick up as quickly as possible. "How do you like your new daddy, Moran?" he asked drolly.

She nearly threw up in her mouth at that. Why did men think that women of any age and relative sanity would enjoy calling them "daddy"? Tightly, she said, "If you ever say that again, or refer to yourself like that again-- even tangentially-- I quit. And you know me, Jim. I'm not joking."

He was silent for a moment. "Apologies, Moran."

"He's interesting," Moran said, forgiving him. She nudged out of her boots and curled her feet under herself, leaning back against the sofa. "Mycroft Holmes. He chose to hire me, but I'm not sure he's convinced of his own decision. I think I gave him the wrong reaction. He expected me to withdraw when I saw a government man poking about, to be more careful, but I think I'm too used to you. I laughed at him."

"And one thing our Ice Man doesn't like is to be laughed at. Oh, you're a delight, Moran."

"Thank you, sir."

"He will never suspect you," Jim continued gleefully. "I've been careful to keep our connection a secret. The only question is if we have the same taste in women."

"I am to everyone's taste," Moran said primly. When Jim burst into peals of laughter, she smiled.

 

* * *

 

Being Mycroft Holmes' assistant was like walking into an alternate reality, where she got to see everything that she could have been, but wasn't. She was that straight-laced and shiny schoolgirl once again, with perfect hair and a French manicure on her nails, long legs and A-line skirts. The only change was a discreet and tiny gun pressed daringly against her thigh, and given who she had been at sixteen, it wasn't really that much of a stretch to think that she could have had the gun then too. If she had not gone to war, this might be who she actually was, not just who she was pretending to be.

 "Your main job is the CCTV," Mycroft informed her, as soon as she had a government id clipped to her coat pocket and was sitting in front of him in the cavernous, darkened room he called an office. "You need to monitor a specific list of persons at all times. The technology can set flags for certain kinds of behavior, but isn't specific enough to always weed out the specific-- Mr. Brown reaching into his suit pocket and pulling out a gun to shoot his lover, for example-- from the generic-- Mr. Brown reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a credit card to pay for a meal. You will sort through all of the flagged incidents, choosing which ones to bring to my attention.

"You will be briefed on what, exactly, we are looking for from each of the individuals on the list. You are expected to memorize this. If you do not memorize this, and something is overlooked, your employment will be terminated. I have high standards for my employees. Your failure is not an option if you expect to be associated with me.

"Additionally, you will be at my side at all times to watch my meetings and provide recommendations for the list of active CCTV monitoring. You will carry a gun. Since you will be at my side at all times, you will have to be excellent at multi-tasking. The CCTV will be downloaded onto a work phone for this purpose.

"Your private life is, as of now, no longer private. Your apartment will be watched, and the CCTV for your lodgings will from this point forward be monitored by me personally. All prospective lovers, friends, and companions of any kind will be monitored and vetted by the security personnel. Your private life is also unlikely to be particularly full after this point, since you will be expected to always be on call. Our work is often a matter of life and death, Moran, and your personal life is not your country's concern.

If all of this is still acceptable, you will have today to familiarize yourself with the files, the CCTV, and your new mobile. Tomorrow, you will begin shadowing me. Do we have an accord?"

Moran nodded, a secret thrill at the challenge making her heart skip a beat. "Yes, sir."

He slid the mobile over to her, a slim, black device that was nothing but a black screen. There were no markings on it at all, no buttons. She turned it over for a moment, briefly confused.

"Ah," he said, "they call it an iPhone. It won't be released officially for another year, so mum's the word. Our own technology division has had their hands in yours as well, to add further functionality than the Americans are capable of quite yet."

"Of course, sir," she said. She set it to turning on, and began looking through the stack of files in front of her.

Three weeks later, she was standing behind Mycroft's chair as he met with the head of a Russian construction company that dealt less with construction and more with murder. She didn't let on that her heels were killing her, that her ankles hurt, and that she hadn't had a proper shower in two days. She knew regardless that she was the best thing the Russians had seen in a while, since when they had smarmily asked for her name-- she had lied, of course, and told them it was Annaleise-- they had leered and drooled. Instead of letting on about any of it, she flipped rapidly through footage on her phone. It was only when the Russian's voice changed inflection suddenly, going just a touch higher, that she glanced up. His bodyguards were shifting on their feet.

She slipped her phone into her pocket, drew her gun, and shot all three Russians through their heads. She took the phone back out and closed out of the video. Lifting one foot, she pulled off one heel and then the other-- her ankles really were killing her-- before stepping over the bodies and looking carefully at the company head, "Mr. Raskolnikov," or so he had claimed. He was an older man, not quite as heavy as Mycroft, with rings that nestled into most of his fingers. He had a phone in his hand. She nudged it out and carefully took it by the edges, reading the unsent text carefully. Her Russian was tolerable, but not wonderful. However, it was good enough to be able to see that he was texting in a hit against Mycroft; she had seen similar phrasing enough during her dealings in Russia herself.

"Do you plan to clue me in, Moran?" Mycroft demanded. "Despite how cavalier you seem to be, we do not just shoot our business contacts in the head when you work with me." He was very pale, and looked just seconds from tossing his lunch.

She snorted and slid the phone over to him. While he read and turned several other interesting colors, she began searching the bodyguards, revealing a baker's dozen of weaponry and some clearly fake sets of identification.

"What led you to the conclusion to shoot him?" Mycroft sounded grudgingly respectful now. He had taken out his own phone and was scrolling through his contacts, no doubt looking for the appropriate person to call now that they had three dead Russians on their hands.

Absently, Moran said, "His voice changed."

Mycroft gave her an unamused look. "That's not enough evidence to lead to any kind of useful deduction, my dear. What if you had been wrong? You would have shot three innocent men."

"Hardly innocent," she said. "And I'm rarely wrong. If it helps--" --Here she nudged the closest bodyguard with her toe-- "I think that I may have met this one in Prague. If thinking that it might have been some kind of unconscious memory rather than sheer instinct helps you at all. I was trying to retrieve some information and he was trying to kill the source."

"So happy that you have some consideration for my feelings," Mycroft muttered.

"The negotiation was clearly heading south anyway, and can hardly be pinned on us. Let's talk to the Russian diplomat and see why he wanted you to meet with these men. I'm sure it would be edifying."

As Mycroft heaved a sigh and brought his phone to his ear to call the clean-up crew, he said, "Please schedule a psychiatric evaluation for yourself."

She frowned. "Why? For this?"

He ignored her to begin talking on the phone, but his gaze remained on her for a long, unreadable moment before he turned away.

Discreetly, Moran texted Jim: _Are you really having hits put out on my new employer just so that I can prove my loyalty? Because I'm sure that it will happen in its own time regardless. SM_

_Don't be smart, lovely Moran,_ Jim replied. _Dinner tonight? JM_

_I'll do my best,_ Moran wrote. _You're paying. SM_

_Of course I am. Feel free to bring your new employer. We'll have quite the threesome. JM_

_Ha. Ha. Feels like I'm in a threesome already, except somehow[I'm not getting any satisfaction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrIPxlFzDi0). Or maybe it's a tug of war. SM_

He didn't reply, but she got a notification saying that her ringtone had been changed to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."

Sighing, she flipped the phone closed, pulled out her work phone, and returned to work.

 

**iv. Sherlock Holmes**

Moran had been working for Mycroft for a year when she finally made a mistake. Not one concerning her place in Moriarty's operations-- she was fairly sure that Mycroft wouldn't have been able to see that if she had danced the truth naked in front of him. No, just a simple mistake, brought on by overwork. She had been monitoring a situation with a very junior member of the war office for days, and had failed to keep up with most of the other CCTV footage as a result. She had also been required to provide long-distance back-up for Moriarty in one of his rare meet-ups with a client. She was weary and worn thin when she realized that Sherlock Holmes had slipped away from CCTV and she couldn't trace him.

She was in her flat, naked in the bath, trying to chase down loose ends when she began frantically flipping from CCTV camera to CCTV camera, trying to catch sight of him. An hour later, dripping wet on the couch, she was putting the call into Mycroft.

"Moran, I thought I had told you to go home."

"I am home. I was working in the bath. Mycroft…."

"Spit it out, Moran."

"I've lost track of your brother."

"What."

"Two days ago. I've had a backlog of footage. I made an error, and I can't find him."

Mycroft was silent. Moran had never known him to go see his brother, never known him to talk of his brother at all, but she knew from the constant supervision of Sherlock, and the frequent reports that he expected of her about the man, that he did indeed care for Sherlock.

Jim would probably save her from being killed, if he didn't find her error too amusing.

"I'm surprised it took him over a year to slip away," Mycroft finally said. He sighed, the sound light and soft on the other end of the line. "I will take care of this, Moran. Good work." The last words were said in distraction, and made Moran gape in silence even after the click and the beginning of the dial tone.

Irritated with herself, Moran turned the sound system on and [set Billy Idol to blaring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdphvuyaV_I). The guitar wailed as she got out the fork for her takeaway and set to dumping it on a real plate to make it look more like real food.

_"Last night a little dancer_ ," Billy sang, voice licking around the words, _"came dancin' to my door. Last night a little angel came pumpin' on my floor. She said, come on, baby. I got a license for love, and if it expires, pray for help from above-- because--"_

Her phone rang, an irritating little beep like the roadrunner from the Loony Toons. "Darling, I can tell you're angry even from here," Moriarty said.

_"In the midnight hour, she cried, 'More, more, more!' With a rebel yell, she cried 'More, more, more!"_

Moran sighed, picking at her palak paneer. "I lost Holmes' brother. He doesn't appear inclined to kill me, however."

"You lost Sherlock Holmes." Somehow, in Moriarty's flat tone she sensed more danger than Mycroft's could have possibly ever contained. She tensed immediately, setting down her fork and staring into the air.

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Well, _find him_!" Moriarty screamed, so loud that she flinched and had to hold the phone away from her ear. "Find Sherlock Holmes, or I will _gut you and wear you like a hat_."

The phone clicked, again. Dial tone, again.

Why did Moriarty even care about Sherlock Holmes? Wasn't his game with Mycroft? Moran shook her head. Getting to her feet, she repacked her food and changed her clothes, slipping out of her pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a loose top. It was time to pull some overtime.

 

* * *

 

Tracing Sherlock from the edge of the last known CCTV footage took forever. It would have taken a long time even without the tearing exhaustion that ripped through her brain and into her bones, but such was the rewards of having two demanding jobs. She questioned everyone, from the businessmen on the street to the taxi drivers to the homeless, several of whom were veterans and more than willing to help a fellow soldier out, especially if she was a beautiful woman. Inch by inch, minute by minute, she traced Sherlock's path to a seedy heroin den. He was lying on a pile of dirty blankets, staring at the ceiling with bruised track marks racing up and down his arms. His hair was matted and his eyes were ringed with bluish-gray.

Moran sighed at the sight, taking off her gloves-- it was bitter cold this December-- and wrapping her fingers around Sherlock's thin wrist to take his pulse. It was steady, but far too fast. Hand still on his wrist, she called Jim.

"Boss?" she said once he finally answered with an irritated snap. It was four in the morning, which was generally the time when he was able to close his eyes for the first time in a good twenty-four hours, some days. "I've found him. Shall I report it?"

The phone was silent. There was just the sound of too heavy breathing for a moment before a gusty sigh. "Yes, Moran. Just keep him alive. He's no good to me dead. Where is he?"

"Heroin den. Islington."

"Now, why would he go and do that again?"

"Again?" She didn't really expect a reply, checking on Sherlock's eyes. His pupils were dilated, glazed and blood-shot in the dark. He was aware of her now and his eyes, even now, were roving over her, skating over her shoulders, the material of her shirt, the way the gun at her waist made her shirt tuck close to her body. "If he's anything like you, I suspect he was bored. Must go."

She set the phone back into her bag and pulled out her work phone.

"Two phones? Naughty, naughty." His words were slurred. "Two phones usually means… cheating."

"I'm not 'cheating.'" Moran gave a sniff. How absurd…ly accurate, actually. "I work for your brother and I have a work phone and a personal phone. I just called your brother with a personal update, and now I need to make the official report, so that we can use official resources."

"Don't want _help_ ," Sherlock said, struggling to sit up. "Not from a rich girl playing soldier. Is this how you get your thrills?"

"Don't try to be clever when you're high," Moran advised. "It's the same as when you're drunk, I expect. You just sound silly, and you'll regret it later. Set yourself to observing instead. You can always use your observations against me later. Boss," she said, when Mycroft picked up on the first ring. He had obviously been fielding calls all night, probably about Sherlock. "I have him." She rattled off the address, happy he didn't bother with such questions as "Why?" and "How?" and other such stupid things. And then, exhausted, she sat beside Sherlock, her shoulder against his, and coaxed his drooping head onto her shoulder. "Hope your friends don't rob us," she said. She drew her gun and let it lay in her lap, her eyes falling half-closed.

"Even if they did, you're an excellent shot," Sherlock mumbled, breath hot against her collarbone.

"Too right," Moran said. She was getting an odd rush of maternal feelings, which was quite odd considering that she hated children and Sherlock was older than her by at least three or four years, if she remembered correctly. It was probably explained by not having slept in the past few days. "I'm a sniper, you know. Don't tell your brother. I'm waiting for him to find out on his own."

Sherlock mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. "What's your name?" he asked, voice a deep rumble.

"Umm… Hyacinth."

"Liar," he said, lips curling in good humor.

"Would you like some music? 'Tubthumping' seems oddly appropriate."

"I would rather you leave me here to die. _Do_ shut up."

His bent head was nestled into her scarred chest, and her own eyes began to close rather against her will. She kept the gun close, falling into a wary half-sleep that could be broken at any moment. Half an hour later, Mycroft was at her side, helping her get Sherlock to his feet and out of the disgusting hole they were in. Sherlock was pressing a crumpled slip of paper into Mycroft's hands with a grip that trembled, and for a moment, Mycroft's face is unmistakably, unspeakably soft. "I think I'm overtired," Moran admitted when she slumped into the town car beside them. "I'm finding him charming. I've never met him, but that doesn't seem to be the usual reaction."

"No, it's really not," Mycroft said. He was looking at Sherlock's head, again listing alarmingly to her shoulder, with bemusement. "Most find him abrasive, manic, and cruel."

"Just my type," Moran mumbled. She didn't quite fall asleep again, but she also didn't remember getting to her flat, putting on her pajamas, and going to bed either.

When she woke, Jim was in bed with her. His fingers were clicking idly over the keys, no doubt chatting with another criminal in need.

When Moran sat up, Jim spared her a look from the corner of his eye. He was unreadable to her so much of the time that it didn't surprise her that she didn't understand his expression now. She tried to rake her hair into some semblance of order, then gave up and let it stand on end as it wanted.

"You wouldn't gut me," she claimed, voice rough with sleep. "You like my guts where they are. You think I'm gutsy."

He touched her tentatively. His skin was so pale it made her hair look darker than it was, his fingers twisted through her hair.

"I'm a bit fond of them, but I could live without," he said. He was nothing but eyes in that moment, dark and thoughtful and lingering on her lips. She could hardly breathe and his hand was only on her cheek. "You are truly loyal, Moran. You were prepared to stay in your apartment and binge-listen to Billy Idol when you thought only the Ice Man cared about Sherlock, but you raced out to find him when I asked."

"Of course, boss." She grinned, trying to gain some distance. "I don't do double-double agent shite. I'm yours."

His lips were a ghost against hers, so hot they burned. It was dry and quick, almost like the kiss of a child, but the room still spun as he drew away.

"I should go," he said, getting up. "Wouldn't want Holmes to get too suspicious. Expect him to draw you in for questioning when you go to work."

"What?"

He smiled at her, delighted at her confusion. "Why, he wants to question you about where your fiancé has been all this time."

"What?!"

"Do learn another line.

"No. No, this isn't funny, boss. What are you talking about?"

"Relevant files are on the _taaaab-le_." He said the last bit in song, then swanned off. She threw a pillow at his head, so angry that she couldn't speak and with no idea why.

 

* * *

 

"It has come to my attention that you somehow have managed to become engaged. How, exactly, did you manage to keep this from me?" Mycroft's voice was dry and unaffected, his gaze steady as he looked down at his nose at her. He had lost some weight, and the strain of Sherlock's rehabilitation was lingering around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. "What did I say about your private life, Moran?"

"That I should expect it to no longer be private. I took it under advisement, but decided that it doesn't suit me." She smiled, crossing her legs. His gaze didn't even flicker to the exposure of her thighs as the skirt rode up and she wondered, not for the first time, if he was gay.

"Oh really." Mycroft opened the manila file on the table. It was neat, as all files were by the time they made it to Mycroft's hands. There was a CCTV capture of Jim leaving her flat, face just slightly obscured, stapled to the inside cover. There is another picture inside of a man that looks mostly, but not entirely like Jim. "James Mortimer. Security consultant, often out of the country. I assume that's how you kept him hidden this long?"

"Jimmy," she corrected, neither confirming nor denying. She expected it to give her a thrill every time she had to say it, since Jim hated the nickname and wouldn't tolerate it under normal circumstances.

Mycroft gave her a look of sheer, unimpressed disgust.

"Oh, all right. I met him on a job, before you." Half-true. "Since he's a security consultant, he got a bit in the way of what I was trying to do. I… I found him impressive." She smiled at that, remembering their first meeting. Remembering that childish, yet somehow heated, kiss from the night before. "He's the smartest person I've ever met, with the vilest sense of humor. He adores fashion but never tries to make me wear high heels in my off hours, and his mother was a morgue attendant in Ireland, so he has the most morbid taste in ties and cuff links. What do you want me to say, Mycroft?"

"You actually love this… consultant." Mycroft's nose wrinkled as if she was dangling a dead rat in front of his nose.

Moran thought of all the times she had told herself that she didn't love Jim, including the day that they had met. She thought of his shark smiles, and the way his tongue slid over vowels, and the way he changed accents and personas at the flip of a coin. "Of course not," she said. She knew she was lying, but better a comforting lie than the truth.

Mycroft sighed. "Caring is not an advantage, Moran. It clouds your judgments, makes you lie to your employer, and causes unfortunate confrontations, such as this meeting. However, since I can't stop you from caring, I urge you never to make me meet this man so I won't have to watch you turn from a smart, rational woman into an insipid schoolgirl with an infatuation."

Moran raised her eyebrows. "Me, boss?"

Actually laughing at that, Mycroft said, "You have a point, my dear. I trust that your… connection won't stop you from watching over my brother at a secure facility? I have other matters to attend to, and he appears to not despise you with ever fiber of his being, which is a check in your favour."

"I'll pack my bags," Moran said. She thought, briefly, of what it would be like to do something other than what she was told for once.

As she rose to her feet, Mycroft stopped her in her tracks by saying, "Best wishes to you. Endeavour not to invite me to the wedding."

"Trust me, I've no intention of it," Moran replied.

 

* * *

 

Moran spent a whole month at the rehabilitation center with Sherlock, and by the end of it, she wanted to kill him, herself, Mycroft, and Jim for getting her into this whole mess. Sherlock spat deductions at her like insults, incorrectly concluded that she was in love with his brother since she "stunk of unrequited love," and for two weeks knew the color, shade, and material of every pair of pants she wore and she had no idea how.

She still, however, let him curl his head into her lap when he went through withdrawal, and read him _Fight Club_ when he was bored. The protagonist reminded her of Jim somehow.

Ostensibly, she was guarding him. Privately, she guessed that Mycroft wanted to punish her for managing to hide Jim away, and also give his brother a toy. Either way, Sherlock coming off a bender was nothing compared to Jim every day, so she greeted each mood swing with patience and tried not to fall in love with this psychopath, since she already had her own.

"I get so bored," Sherlock whispered into her thigh. His eyes were wide, panicked; he hadn't been able to sleep in forty-eight hours. "I can feel my brain dying around me. There's nothing to drive it, to illuminate the shadows, to keep me moving. I might as well be dead."  
She started braiding the curls around his ear and thought about that.

"I have a fiancé. My unrequited love is over him, for the record. I don't think he loves me the way I love him, but I try not to care. I'm not sure if I even love him or just the idea of him. I'm not sure he _can_ love me. He's very bright, and when his job is boring, he starts fights, and throws temper tantrums, and really you remind me of him quite a bit. But when his job is interesting, everything is right in his world. Have you thought of getting a job?"

"Dull. Office work. Suits. Ugh. Water coolers."

"Make your own job, then," she said sharply. "You're brilliant, Sherlock. _Use_ it."

"I don't like anything," Sherlock whined, "and no one likes me."

She snorted. "You have to like something. There has to be one puzzle you never solved, or some job that never stops providing puzzles. Humans beings are the most awful creatures put on this planet. There has to be some unique thing they do that you absolutely must figure out. That could be your job."

Sherlock's eyes light up. She can see them even from this angle, up above, his bright blue eyes turning icy and focused.

"Go away," Sherlock said. He sat up abruptly and flapped her away. "I have to think."

She frowned. "What?"

"Don't be stupid, Marta. I have thinking to do."

She was used to frequent mood changes, both with Jim and with Sherlock, but his sudden manic energy was beyond her. "I don't understand."

"Carl Powers!" he shouted at her, and then threw himself into the bathroom and locked the door.

 

**v. The Announcement**

When Moran was finally able to go home next, she naturally found Jim on her couch, reading over scripts. Whatever his latest plan was, it required him being an uncomfortably fluffy and scruffy actor. It was probably meant to make him seem charming, and it did, but for some reason, it just made Moran deeply discomforted. Jim was still wearing the cute-actor clothes, his hair standing on end, and he spared her a pleasantly confused look when she entered before turning back to the scripts.

She dropped her bags to the floor, ignoring him as she stripped her nylons off about two paces away from the doorway. Peeling them away from her legs, she wound them into a ball and stuffed them in a nearby pair of her boots before trudging over to the chair. She sat across from Jim and studied him. He looked up at her again, expression wry and a little bit more "him" than it had been before.

"Yes, dear?" he asked.

"You realise that you have made an error."

"A what?" His voice darkened.

"A mistake, a misjudgment." She stood and wandered into her bedroom, calling back to him as she took off her skirt and blouse. "Unless you had considered that we are going to need to have… dinner… with my father and get him to post an engagement announcement in the papers, or else Holmes is going to look at my fiancé closer than we would like."

Jim was quiet for a long moment as she pulled on an old Clash t-shirt and a pair of shorts.

"…Of course I did." As she walked back into the living room, Jim set down the scripts. "But in case I didn't, why do we have to do anything of the sort?"

She sighed heavily, wondering why all of her geniuses had to be so stupid. "Because, boss, my father is a peer of the realm." He continued to look at her. "A _peer of the realm_ ," she repeated. "That means that there are certain expectations. One day, I'm going to be Lady Moran, if he doesn't find a way to disown me. If my marriage isn't announced, it will make just as much of a fuss as if it is."

He frowned, putting on his "hush, darling, Moriarty is _thinking_ " face, so she began flipping through songs on her iPod, trying to decide a playlist to pull up.

By the time she looked up, he was directly in front of her. She jumped, [finger slipping](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjyZKfdwlng) and starting "Cherry Pie" blasting through the sound system.

"Well, shit," she said, dialing the sound down.

"It shouldn't be too bad." His voice was a purr of amusement as his gaze met hers levelly. "And your father has met me already and thinks we've been dating for _years_. It will hardly be surprising to him."

"There will have to be pictures. In the papers," she snapped. She set down the iPod with a hand that shook. Her nails were a chipped and battered crimson. Sherlock had said the color was atrocious and she was clearly trying too hard; who was she trying to impress, exactly?

"Remember who you're talking to, kitten," he snarled, leaning closer. He didn't normally wear cologne, but whoever he was pretending to be clearly did, something that smelled like coconut and sunshine.

She snorted. "I know exactly who I'm talking to, boss. You didn't think this game of yours through because you wanted to mess with me."

"I found a _reason_ for my presence in your life, and our business can operate much more smoothly if we don't have to sneak about when we have something to discuss. What more do you want from me, Moran?"

She raised her eyebrows. "You're the one who wanted to be in my life, Moriarty. I could just as easily do without."

"Face-to-face contact is required of your position in my organization if you want to retain it. Do you want to quit, Moran? Because it comes with a death sentence if you do. A _long_ and _painful_ death sentence, so let me know now so I can find a torturer worthy of your blood."

"I'm not quitting." She turned away from him, feeling cold. She was beginning to realize just how toweringly tired she was. Sherlock had run her ragged, in between his sickness, his neediness, his rages, and his relentless whining. Mycroft had demanded debriefings more frequently than even made sense, as well, and in between that and her regular duties, she was feeling a touch thin. She hadn't done her real job for Moriarty in ages. She missed feeling useful; day-to-day, it was as if she really was just Mycroft Holmes' nameless, insipid assistant.

"Aww…. Is someone feeling _neglected_? Poor Sabine Moran…." His eyes were endless pools of pity and humor; she snapped, shoving him back angrily and heading toward the door.

"Leave, if you're going to be--"

"--Myself?" He sighed, walking over to her. "You're clearly tired, Moran, because I'm not any different than I normally am."

"I've requested a vacation, which I ordered Holmes to let me take. Is there anyone I can shoot? Anyone? Working for him, I might as well have married Sir Clive George like my father wanted."

"Sit down. I ordered Indonesian food, and if you're a _very good girl_ , I'll let you help me rehearse."

"I will shoot you in the stomach."

She fell asleep next to him on the couch, a beer in one hand and Jim reading scripts beside her, but somehow it wasn't enough anymore.

 

* * *

 

Before she scheduled what was sure to be an uncomfortable dinner with her father, Sabine took her vacation. She shot no less than four different people through their skulls and, breathing deep as she lay on in the ruffled silk sheets of a bed in an expensive hotel in Madrid, she realised that she was letting her life get away from her. She had coasted through these years with Moriarty and with Mycroft, doing what both had said without questioning why.

She had been angry and restless after the war, and Moriarty had given her purpose. She loved him for that, but the question was, did she love him for other reasons or just because he had taught her how to do what she had always wanted to do? Was that a good enough reason to love someone, truly? What did she really know about him, even after all these years?

On the streets of Paris, she wore a white sundress in February, a duffle bag thrown over her shoulder with her gun inside, and thought about how much she liked Sherlock, truly, and her grudging fondness for Mycroft, and her blinding devotion to Moriarty.

She remembered trips to Paris in her youth, the summer before her mother had run off with the housekeeper. She had been a sullen fourteen-year-old with a piercing through her lip. She had just grown into her legs, and it kept surprising her how much older people tended to think that she was.

"They call Paris 'The City of Love,'" Mother had said. Her blonde hair was in a long braid, tendrils curling into her eyes and softening her harsh face. She had always worn red lipstick like a weapon, and when she had left, her goodbye for Moran had been a tube of dark wine-red color.

"Love," Moran had scoffed, tugging up one of her knees socks. She had crossed her arms over her chest, feeling uncomfortable because her body was suddenly all soft curves and long legs and she _hated_ it. She wished she was a boy, all angles and sweaty palms and cracking voice. She had dreamed of playing football, of going to punk rock concerts and letting the drumbeat vibrate up the soles of her feet and into her heart.

"Don't make fun of love, darling," Mother said. She had been in one of her rare moods, happy and less distant than normal. Likely, she and the housekeeper had begun making plans to run away already. "One day it will pounce, and you'll regret not listening to my advice."

"And your advice is?"

"Love twice, marry once, and sex is power, so exercise it as much as possible."

She had really been an awful mother. Moran still didn't understand what she had meant. Should both loves happen before the marriage, and the marriage be separate? Was she meant to marry someone old, get all their money, and love again after they died? (Knowing her mother, this wasn't out of the question.) Had her mother meant sex as in sexuality, or as in genitalia?

Was this really going to be what she did for her entire life?

Moran went home again after three weeks away, feeling far more relaxed and thoughtful than she had when she had set out. She took off her boots, set her bags down in her bedroom, and then sat beside Jim on the couch. He looked up at her curiously. He was back in a suit, expensive and sleek, with the jacket thrown over her chair and his sleeves rolled up. He had the slightest bit of foam on his upper lip from a latte, a fuzz of pale brown froth.

"Done with your sulk, then?" he drawled, snapping his laptop closed.

She considered him, brow furrowing as she studied the cruel set of his chin, the hardness of his eyes, and the displeased twist of his lips. He was irritated by how long she had been away, maybe, or maybe business wasn't going as well as it could be.

"Cat got your tongue?" he asked, gaze softening as she continued to look at him.

She smiled fleetingly and decided what she wanted.

Snagging his wrist, she jerked him forward and buried her hands in his slick hair. Ignoring his squawk and wriggling, she dragged him up to kiss her, biting his bottom lip and breathing him in. Her hair fell around them messily as she pressed their lips together, wrinkled his suit, and slid her leg between his. Her heart was beating fast as she drew back slightly, watching as his eyes blinked open, then narrowed. She kissed him again, framing her hands around his face. His arms came up once free, knotting in her hair and forcing her closer still. She made a whining noise, biting his lip in protest before breaking away again and resting her head against his.

"And what's this about, Moran?" he asked. She was gratified to notice that his voice was just as unsteady as she felt.

Smiling, she said, "I believe caring is an advantage."

He quirked his brow at her, trying to look superior with her lipstick on his lips. She snorted, nipping his chin before rolling off him.

"I've really got to unpack. You know what it's like when you go off on holiday-- more to do than when you left."

"Really."

"You sound confused. Catch up with the program."

She smiled back at him over her shoulder. He looked absolutely ridiculous, ruffled and covered in lipstick, and _this_ was the man whose life she intended to protect with her own until she died.

"And what's the program now, darling?"

She took a breath in the privacy of her room, shuddering as she unzipped her suitcase. He could kill her; she knew who she was bedding down with and was going into it with open eyes. "I'm going to marry you," she said, quietly, but she knew he could hear her. "And you're going to tell me why we care about the Holmes brothers."

He was suddenly behind her, his hand spreading against her abdomen open-palmed, fingers inching over the bare skin between her shirt and her jeans. She leaned back into his chest-- pressed her lips to his cheek. She wanted him so much it hurt.

"And why would I do that?"

She smiled at that and slammed her elbow into his ribs, forcing him back. "Because I am _irreplaceable_ to you." She covered his mouth with a hand, not wanting to hear him argue. "And if I'm not, you can shoot me yourself, because _this_ is what I want for my life."

She let him go. As he stood there, rubbing his ribs like an offended cat, she reached into the suitcase and pulled out her handgun. She tossed it over. He didn't fumble with it until she dropped to her knees, waiting. Ten-year-old her would be so pleased that if she had to go out, she would go out execution-style.

"I've made my choice, boss," she said, smiling as he stared at her like he had never seen her before. "Make yours. You like games: marry, shag, or kill."

She stared up at him as he pressed the gun against her forehead, his face absolutely unreadable. The scar on her chest burned as she breathed, tilting her head up so the gun was flat against her forehead. Their eyes met below the barrel of the gun. The weight of it set her mind racing, telling her she's stupid, and silly, and that her mother _would not approve_ , not that she had ever cared what her mother thought. She thought about going to war and getting shot at without ever feeling like she was useful, thought about being in a hospital bed with a hole in her chest, thought about tottering down an alleyway in bare feet and killing someone because she had been so bored her skin had crawled.

He dropped the gun to his side. "You're surprisingly interesting sometimes, Moran," he said lightly. "I won't kill you yet."

He left the room and her heart sunk, not sure how to take that. After a moment, however, she started laughing: he had set [the Bee Gee's "More Than a Woman" ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtxBUp6hBaI)to screech out of her sound system.

"I'm taking this as a declaration!" she yelled to him, rising from the floor.

"Take it however you like," he yelled, as the singer's ridiculous falsetto continued, "but I'm keeping your gun."

He couldn't break her good mood, however, as Barry Gibb sang, _"Suddenly you're in my life, a part of everything I do. You got me workin' day and night, just tryin' to keep a hold on you. Here in your arms I found my paradise, my only chance for happiness, and if I lose you now, I think I would die. Say you'll always be my baby."_

 

* * *

 

Her father had been absolutely overjoyed at the news, despite "Jimmy Mortimer's" rather low position in life. Jim wore a suit nearly half the price of his usual and she wore flats at her father's request, so that they Jim would appear taller. In the engagement photographs, she made sure that the tilt of her head when she kissed him obscured his face.

The photographer was most scandalised by how long the kiss lasted.

 

**vi. Moran and Moriarty**

Things changed in subtle ways, though in equally subtle ways, they were exactly the same. During most days and many nights, she was Mycroft's assistant. She was posh and nameless, beautiful and brainless, or so many people assumed, unless Mycroft had her rattle off information about someone they are tracking through the CCTV, or unless she was forced to use the little gun which was part of her uniform.

During many of her days and most of her nights, she was Moriarty's right hand. She was an ex-soldier and a criminal, uncouth and far closer to Jim than anyone thought she had a right to be. Few people who met her lived. No one who met Jim did, except her.

She took Jim's refusal to shoot her as a sign that she was now allowed to pursue him as actively as she wanted, but catching his attention was oddly difficult. It took about four months after the incident with the handgun before she finally received some satisfaction on the Holmes project, at least. It seemed like Jim was always distracted by a crime to consult on, tapping away at his laptop, or one of his many projects: a web-series he was starring in, a book he was writing, a math dissertation he was publishing. It was simply ridiculous.

Moran sat down to tea with Mia Hemswick, Anastasia Whyte-Richardson, and Dolly Dolph after four months of ignoring their wishes to congratulate her on her engagement. She wished that she had managed to ignore them for longer, but there were really only so many ways that you could politely say "no, no thanks to dinner, but let's meet up for a drink sometime!" and not mean it before the other party's dogged persistence wore you down.

"So who is this dashing gentleman who swept you off your feet?" Dolly asked, before the scones had even arrived. "We've all been _dying_ to know. It was quite out of left field. We had all rather thought you were--"

The three exchanged glances and burst into nervous laughter. Moran eyed the bread knife on the table and envisioned gouging out their eyes.

"I met him at work. Not the usual crowd," she allowed. She was trying to remember if she had packed her flask, and if she could still discreetly tipple a shot or three into a cup of tea. She had had the talent in secondary school, but it had been a while since it had been required of her to discreetly inebriate herself.

"You _must_ give us more details!" Anastasia pressed, tossing her perfectly-dyed red curls back. "What man could hook the legendary Sabine Moran? You only ever dated university boys all through school, and then you ran off to shoot people, of all things."

"He's a security consultant and he's often away, so it'll have to be a long engagement," Moran said. She was cut off when the scones and tea arrived, blessedly, and for a few moments, the table fell into a flurry of pleased murmurs, clinging glasses, and politely patted lips. Perhaps ten minutes later, Mia realised what she had said.

"A long engagement! Dear, that's the kiss of death!"

"I imagine the kiss of death would involve more tongue," Moran said dryly, buttering her scone.

The three women all made horrified, shocked noises. Moran began envisioning the perfect kill shot. The way her breath settled into her chest and her shoulders released all tension, the way her joints went liquid and her eyes sharpened-- it was like the best kind of orgasm.

"But Sabine, dear, long engagements! What if he should stray? You say he's away often. Are you sure it's on business? Perhaps he's just stringing you along."  
"Perhaps I'm just stringing him along!" Moran snapped. "God, Mia."

Mia's eyes flashed and she leaned forward. "I'm just trying to protect you. You would do well to take my advice. After my first husband, well."

"I'm sure you mean well, Mia, but Jim's fidelity is not something I have to worry about." Moran sighed. "He's a workaholic. He's a brat-- utterly childish-- and obsessive, and inconsiderate, but I honestly don't worry about him sleeping with another woman."

"Talking me up again, sweetheart?"

Moran closed her eyes, not wanting to see as Jim slid into the seat next to her, his hand warm on her knee. He leaned in briefly, brushing her cheek with his lips so as not to get her gloss on him.

"I will murder you," she said, not for the first time.

He quirked an eyebrow. "Promises, promises." His eyes trail over the other three women. "Are these your friends then?"

"Sure," Moran said, unconvincingly.

"You didn't tell us he was an Irishman." Dolly looked at him with interest. "How… intriguing."

"I am to please," Jim drawled.

"No you don't," Moran said crossly. "What do you need, _Jimmy_?"

His nose wrinkled at the hated nickname. "Fine, _Sabine_. We need to talk about work-- it will be _lots_ of fun. Can you leave early?"

"How dreadful. Well, if I must!"

"Oh, we must do this again sometime!" said Anastasia, her gaze fixed to Jim. "We'll bring our husbands and you'll bring Jim. Do you have a date for the wedding?"

"Small ceremony, very private, not sure yet-- we must be off, sorry."

Looping her arm through Jim's, she set off at a walk that wasn't, quite, a retreat-- it just looked like one. "

"I love you," she murmured fervently.

"I know. You'll love me even more when I tell you about what's up next."

"And what's that?"

"Have I ever told you about Carl Powers?"

It wasn't the first time a sociopath had told her that name.

 

* * *

 

Once upon a time, there was a grimy little boy named Moriarty. He had started attending school in London at twelve years old, and no one liked him. Not just because of his Dublin accent, not because he was dirty, not even because he stared through you like you were dead to him-- though it didn't help. No, they didn't like poor little Moriarty because Moriarty was _brilliant_. Sums came to him faster than even a calculator could do them up. He comprehended theoretical physics in a way that most could only dream of. And he knew it, and he told every student about how stupid and pathetic they were at every chance he could get.

The boys didn't like that especially. Oh, the girls would cry and whinge away into each other's shoulders, but the boys took out their fists and their bricks wrapped in socks and beat Moriarty black and blue. Moriarty was clever, though. He knew the most expedient way to not have his studies interrupted by bruises would be to get rid of the ringleader, a rich boy absolutely obsessed with collective footwear: Carl Powers.

There was always a first, you know. A breaking point. An inevitable beginning. Carl Powers was the beginning of the transformation from Jimmy to Jim, and then to Moriarty. The name Moriarty meant more than just a person, after all. It meant that there was always someone out there clever enough to help even the most incompetent criminals get their revenge however they wanted to. A public service, really. Even the most downtrodden need to get back their own somehow, and Moriarty would always be there to help the waiter at the expensive restaurant that you snubbed kill you in cold blood, and never be caught.

But that was later. First, there was Carl. Moriarty started to pretend. He was just shy. He was just awkward. He _admired_ Carl, really-- what lovely shoes! what a strong swimmer! If only Moriarty were as fit as Carl, he would definitely be able to pull all the girls, like Carl. He moved in close, and when Carl least expected it, Carl died doing what he loved.

A mercy killing, that's what it was. Wasn't it best to die doing something you loved?

Moriarty took the shoes, not because he wanted them or needed them as a trophy, but because Carl would have hated that Moriarty had them.

It was all fun and games until this little rich boy with eyes too big for his face and curls all over the place started screaming to any police officer who would listen about murder. And where, Sherlock Holmes demanded, were the shoes? But no one would listen.

"The fairy tale of Moriarty," Moran said, once he was finished speaking. She was faintly disturbed for reasons that she couldn't quite settle on. His logic made sense to her-- after all, hadn't her ruination of Lisa Wellington when she was fifteen made the girl's family move and Lord Moran scramble to avoid jail time for her? It wasn't the idea of getting rid of the problem in your life that bothered her.

"So what does this mean?" she asked at last. "Why are you telling me your fairy tale?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You did say you wanted to know more about my plans with Holmes, darling."

"And? Why now, when it was four months ago that I asked you?"

His eyes flared with that familiar, mad light that always gave her a chill. They burned like lit coals in the pale expanse of his face, quick to light and hard to cool.

"Sherlock is one of the few people with even the slightest chance of catching me. I could have let it slide-- keep an eye on it, but let it slide-- and then you went and reminded him of Carl Powers."

"Your beginning. The birth of Moriarty."

"And now, I expect, of Sherlock Holmes."

Moran liked Sherlock genuinely. It was a shame that he was sure to die in this game-- that someone so brilliant, so childish, somehow so pure-- had to fall to Moriarty could succeed. But she had admired some of those she had shot before. She had already made her decision, and she stuck by it.

"How can I help?" Moran asked.

Jim smiled, a fox in the hen house. The plan that she was finally in on was a long one, and difficult, and he needed help. That was her.

 

* * *

 

They divided responsibilities. Moriarty was already established as someone to fear, respect, and go to when you needed Daddy to fix it. He would appear in person even more rarely, and Moran would take over some of his duties working on the computer-- or more precisely, her phone, using the laptop only when necessary. To set Jim's plans in motion, both Jim and Moran would be Moriarty.

"This is the absolute hottest thing you've ever done," Jim said thickly a week later, the first time she signed an email with their ambiguous "M."

"You're a narcissist," Moran said fondly. His hand was inching up her thigh for the first time. He traced intricate patterns on the crease where her thigh joined her body, swirls and dashes and stars, runes in languages she didn't know.

"Fortunately, so are you, Moran."

She turned to meet his kiss. She wanted _him_ more than she wanted sex, she realised as her breath began to stutter. His hands were in her hair, pulling her against him. She wanted his attention, his focus, his admiration, his interest, and all it implied. Sex was more a sign of that then the actual goal.

She nipped his neck, low and hard at the nape, and smirked at his scowl.

"Don't start something you don't intend to finish, boss. I've made my intentions perfectly clear, after all."

He raised his brow at her, arch. "Did I say I didn't intend to finish it, Moran?"

She shrugged, sitting up enough to put the laptop aside on the coffee table. Leaning into his shoulder, she pressed her lips into his temple, quick and fond.

"You're you. I suspect I would be more attractive to you if you thought you couldn't have me. Knowing that you can… why would that possibly interest you? Where's the challenge?"

He frowned, eyes darkening almost dangerously. "Don't begin to suspect that you can predict me, Moran," he warned. "I'm hardly _normal_ enough for that."

"Of course not, sir," she said, tone mild enough to make the agreement nothing more than a platitude. His eyes flashed, furious, and she laughed. If anything, that made him angrier, pale face reddening.

"Do you think that having you isn't its own challenge?" Jim finally said, biting out the words like he would much rather bite _her_.

That startled her a little. It was just aside an open declaration, surprisingly sweet from a man who detested sentiment as if he was one of the Holmeses himself. "Yes, but I rather thought you would think the challenge a dull one."

In the face of her surprise, he caught her gaze as he lowered his mouth to hers, glaring into her even as he caught her lip in his teeth.

She snapped. Breaking away, she pulled his hands up, pinning them above his head at the wrist as she pressed her lips to his. Their mouths met and parted, a gliding pressure that was soft and hard in its turn. His scent filled her nose, the vague smell of blood and an expensive cologne. It was like she was steeping in him, drawing out his scent, his taste, until it was all hers. His neck tasted acrid against her tongue, bitter and almost sour from the cologne, the feel of his skin soft in her mouth as she bruised it with her teeth. She switched her grip on his wrists to one hand and leaned hard against them as she used the other to unbutton his crisp, expensive white shirt. Through it, he watched her passively, like he was above it, above her, and she bit at the skin above his nipple, turning it rough and red in retaliation. His ribs, just at his heart-- his stomach, below his bellybutton-- both received the same red mark, a flag that she had managed to touch the untouchable.

Finally, like a valediction, he arched at her mouth, pressing into her touch even as he tried to tug his wrists free. He wasn't fit the way she was, and despite his struggle couldn't quite manage to pull out of her grip. She eased a tad, leaning over him to kiss him, slow and careful as her muscles burn to keep him under her control. His face tilted up into hers, his long, dark lashes sweeping down against his cheek.

His eyes blinked open slowly, pupils dilated so wide that he looked possessed. "You're playing with fire, Moran."

"If your head gets too big, you won't fit into the crown, Moriarty."

She released him, though, since she didn't doubt he would figure out some retaliation if she didn't. His shirt hung open as he stood, offering her a hand like she had just won a negotiation. In his slacks, she could see his arousal, and he was bruised from her lips, mussed; maybe she did win something after all. Feeling like a child at Christmas, she followed him into her bedroom.

He peeled her out of her jeans with careful deftness, somehow managing to divest her of her clothes without her really noticing. His eyes laughed at her, distant but fond. He knew where her condoms were somehow. Likely, some of the time he spent breaking and entering her flat went to snooping and rearranging.

He didn't care for her the way she did for him, but it wasn't about the sex anyway, she thought when his hands were on her legs (gentle) and he pushed inside her (rough). Her head hit the back board as her back stiffened, and her vision began to blur at the edges as her climax started to tighten in her stomach and her chest. It was about… well, it was about being Moriarty.

She gasped, like a lost little girl surprised by a ghost, and closed her eyes.

He didn't sleep after, but he stared at the ceiling and held her to his chest until she did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was trying to keep all the female RAF stuff straight, but I am bad enough with the US military, much less the British one. So if you see at any point any details that don't make sense regarding the wars in general or the British military in particular, please let me know and I will rework the relevant section(s). Moran was in the military for five years and I'm not sure if her rank is possible or likely, but it correlates with what would have been Sebastian Moran's non-RAF position.
> 
> Similarly, if you see any British turns of phrase or spellings that were used inappropriately, let me know and I will change it.
> 
> Thank you for reading the first part and I hope you enjoyed!!! See you next week.


	2. [Part Two] The Icarus Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When one flies too close to the sun, there inevitably comes a fall.

**vii. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson**

Time passed. Mycroft got promoted, again, and his new position had left him working far too hard, thinner than ever, with a hairline that was rapidly receding due to stress. Sherlock relapsed three more times before he finally got steady work with the Metropolitan Police, and he never would call her Moran when he saw her, instead referring to her by a range of names from Sylvia to Amanda to Darcie. Of course, he did the same to the Detective Inspector, so it may have just been one of Sherlock's idiosyncrasies. She never could tell with him, not like she could with Jim.

Then came John Watson.

That morning, Sherlock had called in a favour. In between stopping one minor crisis with Mycroft, which involved slipping a discreet truth serum into a certain man's drink so that he would embarrass himself at an appropriate time, Sherlock had her texting every cell phone at a press conference the word "Wrong!" every few minutes. Though she never could quite predict how or when her day would end, she hadn't expected to end the day at a crime scene next to Boss Number Two while Sherlock laughed his silly head off with an army doctor who, she was absolutely certain, wouldn't have recognised her as military if she had flashed her dog tags in his face. _Men_.

Earlier in the day, she had been transferring Watson to Mycroft. He was a quiet, restless presence at her side, all leashed nerves, and very hard to ignore. Fortunately, she had a lot of practice ignoring more volatile people than him, so she was very busily communicating with her serial killer cabbie when Watson asked her for her name. Of course, as she did whenever anyone else asked: she followed Mycroft's advice, and she lied.

"Uhhh…."

She switched from the research she was doing for the cabbie and texted Sherlock rapidly: _What name this time? Your pet is asking. SM_

 _Anthea,_ he answered just as quickly. _Greek, for flower. I was nearly named Archimedes. SH_

"Anthea," she said, switching back to looking up poisons and scanning through it with a practised eye. She was hiding a smile. Despite himself, Sherlock had given way to sentiment: she had called herself "Hyacinth" when they first met.

He paused for a moment. "Is that your real name?"

She looked up then and smiled a softer version of one of Jim's smiles, all judging amusement. She didn't know if it was the years or the sex, but sometimes she felt as if she was absorbing every inch of Jim until she saw him looking at her through her own eyes in the mirror. "No," she said, letting her condescension seep into the word.

He settled back into his seat. After a moment, he said, "I'm John."

She glanced up at him. Was he insane, or just simple? She'd had quite enough of dealing with simple people for one day, thank you, especially after the outburst of the man she had slipped the truth serum this morning. "Yes," she replied. "I know."

He shifted, uncomfortable. She texted the cabbie about an unforeseen side effect of the poison. _You should probably consider changing your game,_ she added, though she knew he wouldn't. The chance he would expire before she and Jim were able to finish their plans was unlikely regardless.

"Is there any point in asking where I'm going?" asked Watson.

She looked up. "None at all…," she drawled, a little irritated, "…John." She said the name mockingly, like a slap to the face, and to her pleasure, he withdrew a little.

"Okay."

 _Why bother at this point?_ asked the cabbie. _Got a limited run anyway, haven't I? Might as well carry through._

_Your choice. Have fun. M_

She closed her phone and slipped it into her pocket. She would have to have one of Jim's clever little hackers wipe it-- she shouldn't have used the same phone to text the cabbie and text Sherlock, but changing phones in front of Watson would have been… awkward, and she rather enjoyed intimidating him.

Following Watson out of the cab, she watched the confrontation between him and Mycroft while monitoring CCTV. Her life was ever so fulfilling, now.

 

* * *

 

John Watson killed her cabbie. Moran had never wanted to murder someone so badly. It ate at her as she paced around her apartment, back and forth.

"You look like a caged tiger," Jim said. He was rehearsing lines on her couch again, looking like a sweet, ruffled budding actor for children. His beige little cardigan had a small hole in the cuff, and he had put heart-shaped patches in the sleeves, just in case someone saw and wanted to ask, so that he could put the final touch on his character being a hopeless romantic.

"I liked that cabbie. He had a brain, and his expiration date meant I would never have to kill him myself." She realised she was pouting, but couldn't stop. It was just so _frustrating_. The bloody tiny little man, who reminded her of the dozens of army men she had met before, who flirted and was just so _stupid_ \-- he had ruined her months of planning.

"All that planning-- down the drain. I'm not even quite sure if Mycroft got the message. _Why_ did he have to go after Sherlock instead of just getting the murders over with and then dying peacefully?"

"I doubt that Mycroft could have missed the message, darling, even incomplete. Beth Davenport was one of his underlings, and the boy was the son of one of his colleagues. The reporter was set to interview one of his lackeys, even. It was an obvious message."

"Sometimes they're blessed stupid for geniuses," Moran grumbled. "You all are. Ugh, he even told Sherlock our-- your--  name." She sat beside him, pressed a kiss to his jaw. "I'm going to listen to 'Eye of the Tiger' on repeat," she warned.

Absently, he kissed her back before he gathered his papers. "And that's my cue to leave. Our next move will go better, I'm sure."

It didn't.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock finally launching his consulting detective career, properly and with his own blogger, meant that he trampled over their jobs again and again. He would waltz in and destroy a carefully constructed plan within a day or a week, and afterward, Watson would write a bloody blog post about it. Jim just laughed. Maybe it was all part of his greater plan, but maybe it wasn't-- the mad light in his eyes was growing brighter, and it was all Moran could do to draw his attention away from his plans anymore. He barely spoke to her and almost never made sense when he did.

Sherlock stumbled into bigger projects of theirs-- Jim himself handled all their work in China exclusively, since he had a fondness for Mandarin-- and smaller ones-- Moran's avenging spouses, for example, since she was always more than happy to help someone figure out the best way to get away with killing their cheating lovers. And then Jim started blowing things up. He always had loved explosions.

"You're escalating," Moran whispered into Jim's shoulder blades one night, pressing the words deep into the sweaty skin of his back. He glanced back at her, eyes wild and glinting in the dark. "They say that always happens before the end."

"Everyone has an expiration date, not just cabbies," Jim mumbled into the pillow, and Moran's blood ran cold.

"Don't die," Moran ordered, soft voice skipping over the words before it sank into silence. "I can't be Moriarty alone."

"Yes, you _ca-an_ ," Jim sang, and his teeth flashed in the black of the room.

She argued with him, but he refused to say anything more that night, curling her into his chest and letting her bite his shoulder without complaint.

 

**viii. Molly Hooper**

Moran wasn't sure what she thought of Molly Hooper. She met Molly for the first time in the aftermath of Jim's little confrontation with Sherlock at the pool. ("You have to give them an out, one opportunity to back away, because it makes the fall all the better," Jim had instructed, as if she had needed teaching to know how to let fools hang themselves.) Moran knew that Jim's IT persona had dated the mousy doctor for a couple weeks, using her to come face-to-face with Sherlock without Sherlock realising. Jim had told her about the girl to a [backdrop of Metallica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OkUjnrfjC4) as Moran tried to keep their business afloat with Jim's obsession with Sherlock coming to a temporary head.

While James Hetfield crooned about soldiers wounded on battlefields and coming home trapped in their own useless bodies, Jim raged about the fluffiness of Molly's sweaters, her suspicious cat, and her plain, boring face, and how utterly dreadful it was to have to put up with her pathetic trembling and shy stares.

Moran pulled up to Bart's in Mycroft's town car, that same Metallica song playing softly, and reached across the seats to open the door. Molly stood outside of it, blinking, confused. She clutched a worn bluish-gray purse that was embroidered with the outlines of three orange tabby cats peering through tulips, themselves in vibrant shades of pink, blue, and deep red. "Please get in the car, Dr. Hooper," Moran said. She saw Molly gulp, strangling the strap of her purse in her hands before taking a step toward the car: first one, then another.

"I-- I'm sorry, what's all this about?" Molly said as the car pulled off. She squeaked a little as the lurch of sudden motion made her bum slide on the slick leather seats.

Moran gave her an irritated look over the top of her mobile. "Do not apologize, Dr. Hooper, for asking questions. It's trite."

Moran had a short temper these days, with Jim finally somewhat back to work and dealing with The Woman. Moran was grateful for that, since she couldn't deal with Adler due to her connections to Mycroft Holmes' set and hardly _wanted_ to deal with Adler herself besides, but she had another good ten projects she needed Jim's input on, and China was getting impatient at being put off.

Molly fell into a terrified silence that lasted all of a moment before she said, "You sound like him."

"Like who?" Moran said, voice whipping out. Molly flinched.

"Jim. Moriarty, I suppose. Sherlock said he's Moriarty. You do know Sherlock, right? That's what this is about?"

Moran smiled, slow and cruel. "And what makes you think I don't work for Moriarty? Never _assume_ , Molly Hooper."

"You do sound like him." Molly's breathing began to come fast.

In face of the other woman's obvious fear, Moran sighed. "Oh, hush, dear. I do work for Mycroft. Sherlock's brother, in case Sherlock has failed to mention. He often does. Mr. Holmes would like to ask you a few questions about Moriarty, since you spent the most time with him."

"But I didn't spend time with Moriarty. I spent time with Jim from IT."

Surprisingly astute, for a mouse, and Moran was suddenly very interested. "Have you ever read a spy novel, Dr. Hooper?"

"W-what?"

"A spy novel. I'm thinking specifically of Le Carré. If you had, you might be familiar with the concept that the greatest disguise is based on the truth. There is a chance that some of 'Jim from IT's' persona was real."

Molly sniffed. "I don't think any part of him was real, except in the sense that everything he said, the exact opposite was actually true."

Moran tapped her phone case with long, manicured nails and regarded Molly for a moment. She had on a ridiculous cardigan no better than actor-Jim's, and altogether looked shabby and a bit dumpy-- cheap, for lack of a better word-- but once you got past the fear and the fluff, her eyes were quite sharp. She was plain, that was true. Less because of how she looked and more because of how she presented herself. But she wasn't just plain. She was clever, and beneath the nerves, she had steel in her spine. She would, however, be dreadfully easy to manipulate, to use. It was no wonder that Jim didn't think much of her. Moran was more patient than Jim, though.

"You're actually quite clever, aren't you, Dr. Hooper."

Molly straightened at that, eyes shuttering and grip flexing over the body of her purse. "Molly, please," she said tightly. "And you don't have to… have to be _beautiful_ to be clever."

"It helps, sometimes," Moran said mildly. She put her phone down, the screen dark. "The beautiful are overlooked in a different way than the dull. It's why I have my job."

"Because you're beautiful?"

"Because I'm clever, and no one suspects I will be." She uncrossed her legs and leaned in. "Dr. Hooper, don't be ashamed or frustrated that you're overlooked. It's actually one of the greatest powers anyone can hope for."

Molly laughed, nervous and fast. The tension in her shoulders had eased, but she still held it in her mouth and hands, skin drawn thin over her fragile bones. "This is a very strange conversation!"

They were pulling up to the grey warehouse that Mycroft was currently working out of. Moran smiled. "I'm a very strange woman." Before the driver opened the door, she slipped Molly her card. "I'm not trying anything, mind. I'm a happily engaged woman, thank you very much, but give me a call. The world could use more smart women talking."

Molly gave her a nervy smile and left the car.

Moran took a moment to text Jim: _I'm going to turn your little doctor's head. Don't kill her. SM_

The best agents were those who didn't even know what they were doing or who they were giving information to.

 _Ugh, pets_ \-- was Jim's only reply, but she knew he would heed her wishes.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock had met The Woman and taken on a half-dozen strange little cases (none of Moriarty's, thankfully) when Molly finally got around to calling Moran for drinks.

"Um… Sabine? Is it Sabine? Or do you prefer something else? Your card has your initials, but it only has a giant M on it, so maybe you prefer your last name. I don't want to call you something you dislike, and you never really introduced yourself. I would hate to be rude, so--"

"Dr. Hooper, good afternoon," Moran said, half-turning from a suddenly curious Mycroft and letting a smile lick at the corners of her lips. "It's been ages."

"Well, yes. I'm sorry. I was nervous-- am nervous-- I suppose, but why should I be, I mean--"

"Molly, take a breath." Moran chuckled a bit as she alphabetized some of Mycroft's files, pressing her mobile to her ear with her shoulder. "You can call me Sabine if you wish, but I really prefer Moran. Mycroft and Sherlock refuse to call me Moran and I refuse to let them call me Sabine, so Mycroft refers to me as nothing normally, and Sherlock renames me at every opportunity. I believe his… Watson… knows me as Anthea."

Mycroft's breath inhaled sharply at that, almost a gasp, and she gave him a curious look. He was pale, his auburn hair darker than ever against his skin. Of course, he was going grey and insisted on dying it a shade darker than it really was, which may have been why he looked so very white at the name.

"Sherlock's suggestion," she explained idly, eyes still locked with Mycroft's. "He said he liked Greek names or some such. Did you call for a reason, Molly, or just to say hello? Never mind-- don't tell me. I should be off at six. Drinks?"

"Oh-- yes. That would be fine. We could go to my favorite pub. It's--"

"I'll see you there, then," Moran said, cutting her off.

"But you don't know where--"

Moran hung up the phone and raised her eyebrows at Mycroft. "And why are you giving me that look, sir?"

"It's nothing," Mycroft said, collecting himself. His cheeks were still drained of color, however. "Above your pay grade. You've kept in touch with Sherlock's mortician?"

"She's a morgue attendant, not a mortician," Moran corrected, "and I gave her my card. She's just now using it. Flighty little thing, but more intelligent than she lets on. I have hope that she'll be somewhat useful if I can get her to calm down."

"Useful… how, exactly?" Mycroft asked, taking the files she held out to him with a hand that still trembled slightly.

"I'm not entirely certain yet. I'll have to let you know. All right, sir?"

"Yes, yes. Patch Greg through for me in five minutes, would you?"

"I'm sorry, who?"

"Lestrade, Greg Lestrade. I need to set him to watching Sherlock in Baskerville. And go home early, I have a matter to deal with."

Curiouser and curiouser, and as she walked out of the room to phone Lestrade, she heard him on his cell phone: "Put me through to Sherrinford, please," he said, and nothing more.

 

* * *

 

While she was waiting for Molly at the pub, she texted Jim.

 _Do you know anything about a 'Sherrinford'? SM,_ she asked, hesitating over the send button for a moment. He would he horribly superior if he did know about something that she didn't. He was the same with chess and Halo; she hated admitting not knowing something when all he would do would go sing-song and cat-eyed, and laugh at her.

The pub was all in a clamour of people just out from work and desperate to get in at least two drinks before last call at 11:30. Molly's favourite pub seemed to be a hot attraction for a series of offices around the area, so there were a number of women in shoddy pants suits and tottering on heels. A small group of them were doing shots and screaming "Screw Danny!" with each one, so Moran was guessing on a break-up. Moran was standing at the end of the bar, leaning on her elbows amongst the peanut shells and taking long sips from the whiskey in her glass, so cold that condensation was bleeding over the sides. Her ears were full heavy bass and Ke$ha's sly, half-slurred vocalization in "[Tik Tok](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6XpLQM2Cs)," as a couple of tittering university boys shook their bums dramatically to the beat.

She slipped the phone in her pocket when she noticed Molly looking around and waved the girl over.

"I almost didn't recognize you," Molly said, a hesitant smile on her face.

Since she'd had time to go home from Mycroft's, Moran was dressed the same way she did whenever she wasn't at work: like a soldier on leave, almost boyish, with the boots of a skinhead. It was something of a change from the weaponized femininity of Mycroft's assistant, to be sure.

She shrugged. "I detest high heels and manicures most of the time, but I am a Moran, and Mycroft likes me to have the façade of respectability." At Molly's curious look, she explained. "My father is Lord Augustus Moran. If you watch the news much, you may see him. He's always off and about, doing something with politics. Member of Parliament, peer of the realm, et cetera."

Voice heavy with curiosity, Molly said, "I know it's none of my business, but are you and Mycroft…?"

When Moran started laughing, she wasn't sure she could stop. The bartender was giving her a strange look, though, so she gradually forced upon herself some level of decorum. "Oh, sorry. No, we're not."

Molly had turned red. "It's just… you said you were engaged, and he does wear a ring…. Not that he would wear a ring if you were only engaged, I suppose…."

"I understand," Moran said. "Admittedly, I love Mycroft's intellect and do think he's rather attractive. I'm a little too radical for him, though, and I'm not convinced he isn't gay."

Moran flagged down the bartender, and soon the two were ensconced in a booth. As they set down their drinks, the peal of Moran's current ringtone for Moriarty, the opening notes of [Rossini's "The Thieving Magpie,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJiiBq8UnIY) rang out, interrupting Ke$ha's tale of hard partying. She scowled when she read Jim's words.

_Alas and alack, Moran-- I know something you don't? It's an island prison for the most dangerous of criminals, like something out of a comic book. How did you hear of it? JM_

_Holmes went even more squirrelly than normal when I told him the fake name Sherlock had me give his lapdog. He started calling them up as I left. SM_

She set down the phone. "Sorry, it's my fiancé."

"Oh?" Molly leaned, looking intrigued. "What's his name?"

Moran hesitated. "This may be awkward, considering. Jimmy."

Molly sat back. "Oh."

The two were silent in the midst of the noise of the pub. Moran took a sip of her whiskey. "That killed the mood, didn't it? How's work?"

Before Molly could answer, "The Thieving Magpie" rang again. Moran picked it up.

_I'll look into it. I wonder what the Ice Man is hiding. XOXO. JM_

Moran couldn't hide a smile at Jim's overblown affection. She slid the phone back into her pocket, turning back to look at Molly with a smile still on her lips. "My fiancé again. He should be set for the night, though, or at least until he gets bored. We were talking about your work."

"It's no trouble. Boring most days, though there was an interesting case recently, a man who came in with all kinds of strange marks on his corpse-- you can't possibly want to hear this."

"Trust me, I've seen worse. I was in the RAF."

As the night went on, it became increasingly clear that Molly's real reason for calling was that she was fed up with Sherlock and had no one to talk to. Of course, that was the entire reason that Moran had given the chit her business card that day. Molly was the best kind of spy, the kind who didn't know they were spying and thought they were talking to someone trusted and thus let everything slip.

It was also a welcome change to hear about corpses rather than hearing about the latest marriage in her group of Belgravia friends, so there was that.

She handed Molly into a cab that evening and headed back to her flat.

Jim flat on his back on the floor, sketching the Crown Jewels into a cardboard sleeve like those that went around takeaway coffee cups as "The Thieving Magpie" played at the highest volume her speakers had ever suffered to give.

He gave her a brilliant smile when she approached. "Guess who's got a sis-ter," he sang.

"Oh god, there's _more_ of them?" She sat beside him on the floor, and Jim was in such a good mood that he quickly tugged her down and rolled over, pinning her beneath him and snogging her senseless.

"I _love_ this game," he said once he surfaced. "It's the best, like a lolly on a Sunday morning just after you've had to go to the dentist. And maybe there's a holiday tomorrow."

She tugged him back down and continued snogging like they were teenagers on the living room floor. The Holmeses were all well and good, but she was really in it for Jim.

 

**ix. Christmas**

Christmastime in London was never quite the beauty that the movies and Doctor Who would have the world believe. It was wet and cold, and altogether grimy looking. Petty crime was up, but organized crime was taking a holiday to spend time with family, so Moran always received a brief reprieve in December. Mycroft's orders this year were a bit much, though.

"Take a vacation, my dear."

"I don't need a vacation," Moran argued stubbornly, crossing her arms over her chest. She was standing in Mycroft's office, scowling at him stubbornly in her stocking feet. She had lost her heels somewhere underneath her desk some time yesterday; there had been a flare-up in Santa Ana that they had sent an MI6 agent to deal with, and she had been helping monitor the situation. It had led to her being in the office for a solid 48-hours, which had put Jim out since he had finally had to meet with China.

"Your last vacation was five years ago."

"I find joy in my work, sir."

He leveled a look at her, one of those stern ones over steepled fingertips that made her think she was being taken to task by the headmaster. "Sabine."

She was perilously close to whining when she said, "Mycroft, if you give me a vacation this time of year, I'll have to attend Christmas parties. Do you understand how many Christmas parties? There are only so many times I can say 'Happy Christmas' before I pull a gun."

"I have to attend many of the same parties. I am well-aware. But it might do you some good to be out and about. You've become reclusive."

"I haven't _become_ reclusive. I have always _been_ reclusive. I don't like people of my ilk. They're dull, and uniformly stupid, and they persist in asking why I haven't gotten married yet, and then they discuss _shoes_."

"You have some strong sartorial opinions yourself, Moran. I've seen the boots."

Expressing her wordless outrage with a string of angry sounds, she headed back to her desk to pack her things.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, Moran crumpled on Sherlock's couch with her boots in a pile on the floor, one arm draped dramatically across her face. Sherlock slumped in his chair, fingertips together and eyes flicking back and forth rapidly as he thought. The tea things that Mrs. Hudson had brought up were discarded on the table, and there was an experiment going on in the sugar bowl that had half-dissolved the sugar as well as turned it bright red. It was to this scene that John entered the flat.

"What is going on here?" he asked incredulously, looking back and forth between them.

Neither moved. Moran was thinking, angrily, about how she would pay Mycroft back for this, as well as the indignity of Jim telling her that there were no projects for her to work on at the moment unless she wanted to help with cameras for filming his web-series. Sherlock, likely, was thinking about the growth patterns of mold in different circumstances.

"Excuse me, am I the only one who can hear myself talking?"

"You aren't the only one who can _hear_ yourself talking, but you are the only one who _cares_ ," Sherlock said acidly. "Now, some of us are trying to think." He slumped even more decidedly than before, sparing a bitter glare at Moran on the couch. She had won it in a desperate game of rock-paper-scissors, and he was a bit touchy about it.

"Some of us are planning retaliation for our bosses and fiancés, so if the least intelligent person in the room would mind _holding his tongue_ , perhaps the intelligent could get along with their plans and their theories about mold growth?"

Sherlock's eyes widened. "How did you know about the mold?" he asked sharply.

She waved a hand at him before letting her arm drape over her eyes again. "I saw the bath towels."

"What happened to the bath towels?!"

"He's practically a goldfish, Sherlock. I don't know how you can stand it. Next thing you know, you'll have a water cooler and then your descent into _normalcy_ will be complete. Ordinary is so passé."

"Did Mycroft need something?" John asked, finally picking up the bags that he had dropped to the floor. He shuffled into the kitchen and began putting way the groceries, nudging past floating eyeballs and preserved fingers with ease.

"No. He took my phone." Moran realised that she was pouting, but couldn't bring herself to care. "He said I had to have a vacation. Honestly. Me, take a vacation. The last vacation I took was five years ago, and I worked the entire time. Admittedly, it was in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and a few other places, but I still worked."

"He should know better." Sherlock's tone was one of commiseration. "It's why you decided to work for him, isn't it? Even though you don't like him, you really are like John in some ways, Moran."

She sat up, glaring over at the detective's amused face. "Bite your tongue. I am nothing like your pet doctor."

("I should just leave if I'm going to be insulted," John was saying, mostly to himself. "I should just walk out. I don't have to put up with this, and I don't think they notice I'm here anyway.")

"Really? Both returned from the military, both bored by civilian life so had to seek thrills where they could find it… the only surprise is that you thought my brother was thrilling."

"You were in the military?!" John exclaimed.

"The RAF," Moran said crossly, "and I think I liked you better, Sherlock, when your head was in my lap and you were throwing up from withdrawal. You were certainly quieter."

"Moran…. Group Captain Sabine Moran? The one they threw out for lying to her team and saying an attack was sanctioned when she had received orders to stand down? Wasn't the entire team killed, as well as a village of civilians?"

Looking interested at this information, Sherlock straightened to watch, cat-like, as Moran's eyes narrowed. "A man," she said lowly, "would have received a commendation. My attack prevented the destruction of a very large base of British soldiers. Every member of my team chose to die for their country when they signed on. I can't be faulted for what ended up collateral damage."

"That's a bit cold, isn't it?" John asked guardedly. The venom in her voice had made him wary, made him stand as still and straight as if he was in the army again.

She smiled brightly and started putting on her boots. "Ask a few army mates about me, John. I wonder if they still tell the stories. A man lost an… important part of his anatomy for trying to cop a feel, and that's the least of the stories, really." She stood. "Sherlock, I would be delighted to attend your Christmas party, though I may be late. See you soon."

As she left, she heard John say, "If she's attending the party, I'm going to need to bring a date."

"Whyever would that be?" Sherlock questioned, disinterested.

"You wouldn't understand. She's spirited, isn't she."

"Ah. John, I hate to tell you, but she's engaged."

Hiding a smile, Moran spared a moment to wonder if John would think she was even more attractive after he heard about the smuggling. It had been an open secret, and if he started asking questions, it would come up. There was really something wrong with that man. Of course, he lived with Sherlock, didn't he?

 

* * *

 

Moran had been able to miss her family Christmas party for the past several years. Attending this particular one made her want to shoot something, or someone. Lord Moran hosted two Christmas parties every December: a more general business one earlier in the month, and a "private" one on Christmas itself. "Private" in this case meant that he invited over a hundred of his closest friends, political rivals, and business contacts, and as often as he could, used his daughter to try to entice them into ill-advised deals.

At least, that had been how he had treated her teenage years: as if she was a bargaining chip that he could use to get what she wanted. This year, Jim was supposed to have come with her, but that morning, he had received some urgent call or other that had his eyes as bright as she had ever seen them. She spent the day arranging a few threats on a Korean gang leader's young wife and children, and then she had to call a cabbie and help her father's housekeeper with the last of the party arrangements.

"This was quite helpful of you," Lord Moran said, standing by her side for a few moments in between greeting guests. "I thought your fiancé was going to be here, though?" His words were mild, but there was a razor edge beneath. He was worried she would embarrass him by announcing a break-up while passing brussels sprouts to a minister of finance.

"He was called away on business this morning. He may be back, but I'm not certain." She took a sip of her martini and felt the vodka slide down her throat, ice cold.

He made a soft noise of acknowledgement, looking her up and down. "You look lovely, though the scar's a pity." She was wearing a black dress with a scoop neck, showing off just the edge of her scar from the war. She bared her teeth at him and thought she might get away with calling it a smile.

"I think Belinda Hathaway is calling for you. Do go see what she wants," Moran said sweetly.

Though he saw through the ruse, he left her with a nod.

Just before they were to sit down to dinner, Jim appeared. He was grinning like a mad man, energy crackling out of him as if he were a supervillain.

"What happened?" she hissed, pulling him into a dark corner. Nearby, Dolly Dolph tittered as she stared; she probably thought Jim was receiving a passionate hello.

"I met the most _fascinating_ creature today," Jim said, words slurring together. It was almost as if he was drunk, or high. He couldn't seem to stop smiling, but the happier he seemed, the more frightened Moran began to feel.

" _Who_?"

"Can't you _tell_? Can't you see it on me, smell it? If you lick me, I bet you can taste it. _Eurus Holmes_."

Moran reeled back, blanching.

A few seconds later, she received a call from Mycroft: Irene Adler was pretending to be dead, but Sherlock had to think she was actually dead, and Moran's vacation was over. Moran gave her apologies to her father, let him see that a break-up was nowhere on the horizon, and left with Jim.

"We're going to need to talk about this after I get back from Mycroft," Moran said as they headed to the car, thoughts pulled in a million different directions. "What did she say? What happened? What was she like?"

Jim just shook his head. "Ooh, baby, she was _indescribable._ "

"Try." She was beginning to get a niggling feeling, a tightness in her chest, a nagging pain, as if something truly horrible had just gotten all the worse.

"How do you describe the east wind?" Jim said. He was gazing out the window, fingers tapping on the glass. Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat, over and over.

"What happened to letting me in on the joke, Jim? If it's going to be a problem--"

He whipped around to stare at her, eyes wide. "Oh, now there's a thought," he said, voice breathy. "A problem. A final problem. A final solution."

Her breath caught. "Jim--"

"Ugh, darling, don't be _boring_ ," Jim raved. "If you can't be part of the solution, what are you even good for? Let me _think_ for _five seconds_ without interrupting, if you think you can manage."

Moran silently started the car. It was like she was watching Jim bleed out in front of her. And she couldn't do a thing.

 

**x. Pity Party**

"I want to have a birthday party," Molly said over dinner one night. It was months after the disaster of Christmas. Moran had spent precious time putting the girl back together after Sherlock had torn her apart, publicly and without realizing, and to see the girl sound so resolute was actually somewhat heartening. The candlelight in the restaurant gave her face a soft glow, making her brown eyes luminous in the dark. She almost looked pretty in that light, especially with the hint of stubborn determination in the set of her jaw.

Moran set down her fork, tines clinking gently against the delicate China. "Now? But your birthday isn't for another couple of weeks." She was familiar enough with the files of all of Sherlock's acquaintances and remembered well-enough that Molly's birthday was March 27th; it was just barely the beginning of March as yet.

Molly's cheeks turned dusky and she took an unsteady drink of the common Pinot Noir she had chosen. "Well, yes," she said. "But I'll be out of the country round that time for a conference, and just before is my mother's birthday, and in April is my sister's…. I-- I want a proper party for once."

Molly Hooper was growing a bit bolder, Moran thought. She picked up her fork again and took a bite of her tender, orange-marinated halibut. "All right," she said, mentally going through her commitments. She would have to rearrange her meeting with the sheik who had the concubine issue, and her father would have to deal with her skipping the party at Aunt Constance's house-- much to the pleasure of everyone involved _but_ Lord Moran, actually, since Constance had hated Moran since she was a teenager-- but it was doable.

"Who shall I invite for you, and what kind of party were you thinking? Classy? _Scandalous_?" Her voice lingered over the word like the tongue would linger over an expensive chocolate, the smile not quite making its way to her lips.

"Oh no, I didn't mean you had to plan it, Sabine!"

"Nonsense." Moran smiled at her indulgently. Molly was her favorite pet project, really, and she could do with a distraction from the way that Jim was unraveling at the seams. He had only gotten worse since meeting Eurus. Where before his own death had seemed like a possibility, it now seemed like an eventuality, and Moran kept expecting to hear Mycroft tell her that Moriarty had died in some scheme that she hadn't been made privy to. She and Jim were supposed to be working together on Jim's plans, but at some point, a door had been slammed in her face, and she couldn't get it open again. "You're my friend, Molly," Moran lied. "My friends don't have to plan their own parties when I have access to far superior resources than you do."

"No, really. I can--"

"I will plan it," Moran said firmly, and that was that.

Planning Molly's party required exercising skills that Moran hadn't used since she had lived in her father's house, where setting a table properly and planning a party were considered to be the only contribution that a female Moran could bring to the household. She lost herself in the planning of flower arrangements and the tasting of cakes, much to Mycroft's bemusement. Jim didn't even seem to notice, spending long hours in hushed conversations that he didn't invite her to take part in. When he wasn't meeting with one person or the other, he was staring at motes of dust like they held the secrets of the world, deep in thought.

Mycroft and Moran were meeting with a Russian diplomat when Moran's phone began to ring, the tinkling tambourine and blaring horns of Lesley Gore's ["It's My Party"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYJyVEUaC4) that she had assigned to all of her party contacts. Slapping the diplomat's hand from where it was inching up her thigh under the table, she held up one finger and answered with a terse, "Hello, M speaking."

Mycroft's lips went thin and his head rose very tall, making him look like a turtle sticking its head out of the shell. She ignored this with the ease of someone who had known Mycroft for years, and who by now found his resemblance to turtles amusing.

"Unfortunately," the man on the other end of the line was saying, voice wavering, "we-- we're out of-- that is to say, our distributor was-- we're out of the cake you wanted."

"And what are you doing to rectify this situation?" Moran asked silkily.

"I-- I-- please don't--"

"Fix this, by this evening. I don't care how or what you have to do, but if you don’t do something so that I don't have to taste a score of new cakes, I will boil you, skin you, and _turn YOU into a cake."_ She had started at a whisper and ended at a shout. At that, she turned the phone off, slipped it into her pocket, and smiled brightly. "Where were we?" she asked.

The Russian kept his hands to himself from then on.

"What was that display, exactly?" Mycroft said, once the meeting had been concluded.

Moran frowned up at him. "I am sorry to take a call in the middle of a meeting. We were getting nowhere, and it really is important for the help to know their place."

Mycroft shot her a look, just bordering on disgust. "Really, Moran, you show your breeding at the most importune times. And in the strangest ways. You practically seemed unhinged."

"We got what we wanted much faster, didn't we?" Moran said, uncomprehending. "So it was really for the better. I should ask Molly if she wants you on the invite list, actually."

"Not even if you promised to never do that again."

"Really, sir, you're quite a pill."

She texted Jim a couple moments later, asking him whether he thought that it would be a bad thing to turn the baker into a cake, considering that his mother was one of their better contacts.

She was still waiting for a reply when she went to sleep that evening.

 

* * *

 

Moran was on her way to take the tube to the gun range when she decided to call her father. Lord Moran had been in and out of contact since Christmas. Since he had met Jim several years ago, he had settled down somewhat in interfering with her life, and their engagement announcement had settled him even more. However, Christmas had reminded him that his daughter had been engaged for over five years now. He had recently begun to make pointed comments about how he really expected a wedding before his death, which had her rolling his eyes and informing him that he really needed to remember that with his amount of money, he was unlikely to die before they invented a cure for it.

However, needs must, and party needs trumped even a distaste for one's relatives.

"Father, do you remember the name of that caterer? The one that mother used for my fourteenth birthday party? He made the most delightful hors d'ouerves, the cilantro-spiked chicken on an arugula bed? It's too late for me to use him currently, but I'd like to add him to my contacts for the future."

"Sabine, it is four in the morning."

She frowned, dodging a sketchy looking woman with a large trench coat, who was undoubtedly one of Sherlock's network. "Yes, I'm aware it's four in the morning. Shouldn't you be up? Regardless, the caterer?"

He hung up the phone in her ear.

_You have my permission to order a hit on Father. SM._

Moran didn't stop hoping for a reply. It had been three days.

Later that day, when she was in at work, they were told that Moriarty had been caught stealing the crown jewels.

As Mycroft stepped forward, making eye contact with Jim through the glass of his containment, Moran crossed her arms over her chest and tried to breathe. Jim didn't look away from Mycroft, a manic grin on his face. She knew Jim's plan for the Holmeses. She knew the shape of it, the edges and corners and places where it all fit together. But this? What was this, this mad man in a glass cage? It was familiar, but different. Everything about it was Jim, from the way he had danced to Rossini his way to steal the jewels, to finding him ensconced on the throne and crowned.

Jim didn't look at her. He just smiled, like it was all going according to plan and Mycroft was the most fun he'd had in ages.

Sherlock was in Baskerville, Jim was in prison, and that night, Moran threw a party for Molly. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

 

* * *

 

When someone is caught stealing the crown jewels, they are brought to trial rather quickly. From March to May, Jim was in prison less than two months. It felt like two years.

In the second half of March, Moran had to do damage control. She sent out fleets of texts, sketchy video recordings, business cards with Cheshire cats, and emblazoned M on buildings across England: Moriarty wasn't caught, Moriarty was still in business, Moriarty lived on and this was all a goddamn _ruse_. She convinced the crime world that Jim wasn't actually Moriarty. She spoke to China, France, and Portugal; she conducted a murder over the phone, her crisp English intonation a sharp contrast to Jim's Irish drawl that no one dared comment on. Whoever did comment would end up dead, after all. "Moriarty lives" was written on the back walls in crack dens, buried too deep for even Sherlock's homeless network to catch a hint of it, and in India, she had them write it in bodies and blood.

While Molly went to a conference in France and cut open interesting cadavers, Moran conducted a hit in Provence that ended up taking her to Geneva. She met with a suited man  with rings on his hands and a polished cane, who had a monopoly on drug crime in Switzerland, and slipped him a business card with only the letter M on it, her smile nothing but teeth and charm.

She kept busy in March.

April was spent watching Jim beyond interrogation room doors as he gave Mycroft nothing and Mycroft gave him everything, spilling all of Sherlock's secrets out like blood was worth less than water in the ocean. Moran's second boss had never been so hopelessly _stupid_ before, but he was right: he wasn't cut out for field work in the least, and it showed. As Jim smiled and put on a show, Moran texted him from the other side of the glass. They had never found a cell phone on him, so Moran could only assume that he would get the texts eventually.

 _You're a bloody idiot,_ they all said, more or less. _Why didn't you tell me about this part of the plan? Don't die. Please. SM_

A week into May was Moriarty's trial. He went free, and the Holmes brothers raged and swore; Molly cried; Moran finally breathed for the first time since March. Moran couldn't go home for hours. Mycroft was fielding calls from a number of people intensely concerned about how he could have handled this affair all so badly.

When she went home, it was dark and quiet. All anyone could talk about on the streets was Sherlock and Moriarty. She walked most of the way, despite the standing offer of a town car. She had only rarely been out of London, and as such, knew that staring up at the sky and praying on stars was next to useless. She couldn't even see them beyond the light and hum of Londoners going about their business, but she stared at the sky nonetheless.

Her ankles ached as she walked down the street in her heels, too high for comfort, but unlike when she had walked home from the opera so many years ago, she wasn't quite tipsy enough to take them off. The feeling in her chest wouldn't let up, like she had a pit in the center that was drawing everything in with the relentless pull of a black hole. She was so caught in looking up at the sky that she ran into him, again.

"You really must watch where you're going, Moran." He wore a cardigan and jeans, but there was a ring on his hand, silver patterned with diamond skulls.

"I'm under surveillance, you idiot," she said under her breath. "And so are you. What are you thinking?"

"That they can't actually keep track of me, darling, and if I want them to, they can't keep track of you either. He was just shorter than her, and pressed against her side, she could feel him on every inch of her skin. "Come along."

She sighed right down to her toes and matched her steps to his. Any of Sherlock's network in Belgravia would have stood out like a sore thumb, so at least she could rest easy on that front.

"You've already been to see Sherlock?"

"He's convinced that I have dastardly plans. I laid him so many clues, false and true, that it will be interesting to see if he's able to actually piece together what's real and what isn't."

Silently, she stared up at the stars again, his body warm against her skin. "You've risked Moriarty, Jim."

"It will work out. I've actually made a bit more of a legend for us in the long run."

She hummed softly, noncommittal. They neared her flat and were soon going through her doorway, the place already lit and [the soft swell of some music she didn't recognise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg) coming out on the breeze. The wheels were turning in her brain, the click and whir of machinery and machinations. She thought she could see what was coming, a glittering image of the ghost of futures she never wanted to see. She looked at him and he looked exhausted, thin and stretched. Frail, with too much energy humming at his fingertips.

"How long?" she asked, stepping out of her shoes.

"About a month." The music sailed on dreamily as his eyelids fell, half-closed, and he sat on the couch and watched her take off her work clothes with a puckish smile.

"Can I do anything to change your mind?" she asked as she took off her earrings, setting them into a dish on the coffee table. She felt the kind of coolness in her head that had always preceded a bomb going off in Iraq. She rubbed the scar on her chest, feeling the brand of it heavier than she normally did.

Jim wanted, _needed_ , someone to be as clever as he was, and he needed to wreck that cleverness at any cost.

"There are some papers we should sign."

She ended up signing her marriage contract in a Dolce and Gabbana brassiere and a pencil skirt, acknowledging on the dotted line that everything that was Moriarty was now also Moran.

A month later, Jim put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

A month later, Sherlock fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Musical notes for this chapter: I stylized Kesha's name in this chapter as it would have been styled at the time Moran was hearing the song: Ke$ha. Although Lesley Gore is the one mentioned, Gore fitting in more with Moran's aesthetic, the title "Pity Party" obviously comes from the more contemporary song by Melanie Martinez. I also like the play and dissonance between the tones of the two songs when paired.
> 
> Oddly, the chapter "Christmas" was written... if not last, then next to it. Thus why a mention MI6 crept into things. I was binge-reading Q/Bond at the time. Another fun fact is that most of this chapter was written by hand in one of my numerous writing notebooks, all in looping cursive. The subsequent scene with Molly is one that I'm fond of, since it contains the moment where Moran begins to slide into the lilt and snarl of being Moriarty. I also just like every scene with Moran and Molly. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because they're just so different. (In another world, I wonder if as Watson is to Holmes and Moran is to Moriarty, Hooper would be to Moran.)
> 
> It's unfortunate that Mycroft has never seen Jim in one of his really unhinged fits, otherwise he might recognize the moments where Moran is showing a bit of tooth.


	3. [Part Three] Melted Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The question, then, is do melted wings keep you from flying?

**xi. The Rise of Moriarty**

 Moran didn't go to work for weeks. She didn't leave her flat in Belgravia, or answer emails asking for Moriarty's help, or check the CCTV cameras. She lay on her bed underneath the weight of a crushing guilt, absolutely furious that she couldn't stop crying. She was angry, so angry that it boiled out of her eyes and numbed her limbs, made it so she couldn't feel her face or her hands or her heart.

Into the crescendo of [Handel's Dixit Dominus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spwq6JDS9-g), Moran found herself staring into the impatient, unamused face of her father. He was standing at her bedside, hands curled around the footboard of her ridiculously expensive bed, which she had bought with his money.

"Get up," he said flatly.

"No," Moran said, voice barely more than the croak of a frog in the dark.

"This is disgraceful, Sabine. Grow a spine."

"Get out of my goddamn flat!" she yelled at him, sitting bolt upright with her hair a stringy, tangled mess in her eyes.

"Do you think I didn't know? Couldn't piece together? I sat across a table with him for dinner. He came to our house for Christmas. Why wouldn't I recognize him when he shows up on the telly, claiming to be an actor? When he's caught stealing the crown jewels? I'm not stupid."

"I have yet to see any indication of that," she replied coldly. She grabbed her phone at the bedside. Ignoring the wall of texts to Jim that she still had up, she found the number to one of Jim's mercenary bodyguards and began texting.

"Don't you dare talk to me that way! Who do you think pays for this blasted flat-- I'll come and go whenever I please."

She pressed send and laughed in his face. "Do you really think I can't afford to pay for this flat myself? That you have any role in my life anymore?"

"I've heard of Moriarty, Sabine. I know what he does. How did you ever get involved in that?"

The bodyguard came into the bedroom and stopped dead. "You're not Moriarty," he said dumbly.

"I am now," she snapped, "and if you want to keep your intestines where they are, you will remove this man from my bedroom before I _blow your bloody head off_."

At the familiar lash of Moriarty's voice, the bodyguard reacted, taking Lord Moran by the arm and dragging him from the room. Her father protested the entire way out of the room, but Moran could finally breathe easier one he left. She lay back down, staring at the dark ceiling as Handel turned into Rossini.

"Miss… Moriarty, can I help you with anything else?" the bodyguard asked hesitantly. She looked at him blankly, then sat up.

"Yes," she said. "I suspect I have some errands to run."

In death, even gods are demystified. Everything that had belonged to Jim Moriarty now belonged to Moran-- the flats he owned, but never went to since he was always at hers, the money in all the offshore accounts, and most importantly, the business and the name. She also had a letter. It mentioned Eurus, and his plans, and the recordings he'd had made, and didn't once say anything as commonplace as goodbye.

Moran stood in the heart of Jim's flat in Kensington, arms over her chest. There were model trains and chess boards, astrolabes and metronomes, all the evidence of a mind that desperately needed to be distracted, else it would risk ruin. She padded across the floor, picked up his laptop, took the flash drive that had a series of very important video recordings, and went to Mycroft.

"Where have you been? And what are you wearing?" Moran huffed a laugh at Mycroft's tired, standoffish attitude.

"It's been a hard few weeks." Moran swallowed a fresh spat of tears, angry beyond measure that they were appearing now. "Apologies. I should have said something. If you would like me to tender my resignation, I'm willing to do so."

"Don't be ridiculous, Moran. If you had been here," Mycroft said, acerbic but triumphant, "you would have learned that Sherlock is still alive."  
For one blinding, perfect moment, everything Moran could see, feel-- her heart-- burned.

She tried her hardest to turn rage to relief. "He's alive."

Mycroft seemed pleased by her reaction and proceeded to explain the plans, Molly Hooper's role, and how clever they had all been. Moran seethed and pretended not to. She liked Sherlock, she genuinely did, but if he got to rise from the dead, then where was Jim?

She had gone back to Mycroft, full of lies, but it was also time to go back to work. It was time for Moriarty to rise again.

 

* * *

 

She had laid the groundwork when Jim was in prison, so it wasn't hard to step fully into his shoes. It was easy, in fact, to convince everyone that what they thought was true wasn't, because this was _Moriarty_. This was the boogeyman that they wet themselves over, and boogeymen didn't die or get caught-- they just were.

Moran did much the same with Mycroft she always did, as if nothing had changed. She put out fires and showed off her legs and sometimes had luncheon with the queen. Everything was also different, however.

It was a Tuesday in November, grim and cold, when Moran slouched her way into a corner pub in Bristol.

"Oi mate, gimme a pint, would you?" she asked the barkeep, drumming her knuckles on the bar top impatiently. The man, bristled and heavy, gave her a measured look of annoyance and started to do as she had asked. While she waited, she texted a gun-runner in New York with the mild rebuke of: _You are an imbecile and worse, and if you don't procure the items I've asked for, you will shortly find yourself an orphan. M_ All the while she chewed on the nails of her left hand compulsively, the chipped black polish peeling off so that she had to spit black chips into one hand when she put down the phone and grabbed the pint.

"You Andy?"

Moran took her pint in both hands and whirled around, shoulders slumped and back tense. "Who's asking?" she questioned sharply. She looked from the bar to the tables in the corner to the door; all activity had suddenly ceased. The pub was populated by men and perhaps a handful of woman, all of whom now looked carefully blank. The man speaking to her was easily thrice her size, with Russian tattoos and a shaved blonde head.

"Moriarty," the gentleman said.

"M-m-moriarty! I don't want nothing to do with Moriarty!" she squeaked, but a hand like a vice closed around her wrist. The bones ground together, scraping.

"Moriarty wants something to do with you," the Russian grunted. He pulled her towards the back, her boots scrabbling against the uneven wooden floor. She struggled to get away, chugging her pint fast and setting it on the last table before they reached the door. He shoved her threw the doorway, nearly cracking her head against the frame. She stumbled a few steps forward before hesitantly taking the remaining shaking steps on her own.

The man claiming to be Moriarty was the worst imitation she had ever seen. He was a slick little man, face like a rat, with a cheap suit and a bowtie.

"Sit down, please," he said. His voice was high and nasal, the slightest burr of Poland lingering at the edges of his words.

"No, no thanks-- I don't really want to be sitting, don't want to stay too long-- can't, you know, me mum is--"

A pair of hands forced her down, then she found herself in a singularly uncomfortable and cheap pub chair, two large men hovering behind her like a cliché. She barely resisted the urge to sigh and give pointers.

"Now, Andy was it?"

"Yeah. Andy. Andrea, you know. Me mum calls me "Candy" sometimes, or she did. Used to say I was awful sweet, but I 'spect she's none too pleased with how I turned out. Funny how those things work, innit, I mean--"

"Stop talking." She shut her mouth and stared at him with wide eyes, tucking her chin to her chest. The mussed braids littered throughout her hair swung, nearly obscuring her vision. "I'm afraid that some of the projects your employer has you on have been interfering with _my_ projects. Which is… unfortunate."

"I won't anymore, I swear-- I'll quit, I'll move to… to Sussex. To Cotswold. I dunno. It'll be fine, yeah? Or Scotland-- I've got family in Scotland. They don't even hate me too much. That I know of."

"I'm afraid that won't work for us." Moran barely blinked, but the slipped 'us' made her want to smile. Someone was running the rat-man; he wasn't running this whole thing himself.

"I don't-- what do you need to know? I can tell you anything! I haven't been doing this very long, I don't want to bother Moriarty when I've barely done anything!"

"Of course." The rat's voice was gentle, his eyes cold in his face like little chips of flint. He was sweating, the perspiration beading his upper lip. He wasn't used to pretending to be Moriarty, perhaps, or perhaps he was worried about the pain he may or may not have to inflict on Andrea Green. "But unfortunately, given the word I've received, my hands are really tied. Unless you tell me everything about your boss' operation."

Moran spilled everything-- every fake fact, every small lie-- watching as the rat's face grew alarmingly pale when she told him about the gunmen surrounding opium runner Dennison Doyle's family home in Ireland. She leaned back into her chair, pushed her hair back from her face, and crossed her legs.

"And the gunmen are, of course, why you are going to cease pretending to be Moriarty, Mr. Doyle."

The man was silent for a long moment. As she stood, the Russian toughs only moving to ease her way, and began to circle the room, he let out a confused,

"…What?"

"Please drop the accent, Mr. Doyle. I'm hardly the Scottish street trash I was pretending to be-- you can stop pretending to be Russian, though for future reference, your accent was Polish."

"Who are you?" The man's voice was breathy with sudden fear. He was not the best at keeping his composure, which was really unfortunate for a man in his position.

She leaned in close to him, kissing him softly on his cheekbone. "Oh darling, I'm Moriarty. You didn't think I was dead, did you?" She flashed a smile at him. " _Hi-iii._ Now, Mr. Doyle, I really do need you to tell me everything about your Russian employers. They've been making quite the mess of some of my business in New York-- tut tut Russians-- and I'm afraid that that kind of thing makes me dreadfully angry. I've already bought the guards and most of the bar, so I'm afraid you have no escape at this point. We could form a friendship, you and I, Mr. Doyle. Or we could be enemies. Do you want me as an enemy?"

She was better at this game than him; he cracked in a moment, and his break was true where hers had been a lie. Being Moriarty was gratifying work.

And yet, every time she turned around, Sherlock was destroying her network. China went silent; France was fractured; she had to wade in to Sweden herself to keep the connection by the skin of her teeth. Finally, she had to change the way she did things to completely that it took weeks of all-nighters and exhaustion so intense that even Molly ended up patting her hand and asking if she thought she needed a vacation.

She didn't need a vacation. The last vacation she had needed was years ago, when she decided she wanted in on everything that Jim Moriarty was and could ever be.

Sherlock left the Middle East and returned to England, thinking he had squashed Moriarty like a bug. He had never been as smart as Jim wanted him to be.

He was ragged-looking, and older than he had been before. Life chasing after Moriarty had beaten him harder than it had beaten Moran, leaving him bruised and pained. After the barber finished shaving him and trimming his hair, Moran helped him with his coat, letting the Belstaff slip over his shoulders and settle with its familiar flair. He was thinner than he had been, and it hung on him like a drape. He was fragile in a way he had never been, even during rehab, not even when he had rested his head in her lap and tried to block out the scream of his brain as it attempted to solve all the world's problems. She almost felt guilty for the fight she had given him. But he had survived and Jim had not, and at least he was here to look pale and wan.

After Mycroft left the room, she warned, "Sherlock, John won't thank you for leaving him behind." There was little chance he would listen to her when wouldn't listen to Mycroft, but there had been times when she thought he liked her more than he liked his brother. "Being left behind is the worst thing you can do to someone who cares for you."

He blinked once before his eyes narrowed. "And who left you, Moran? Never mind-- I remembered I don't care."

("Keep telling yourself that," she interjected, almost fond, but he ignored her.)

"Besides," Sherlock continued, "I doubt John was affected overmuch-- I'm sure he's been fine since I was away."

Just for that bit of blinding stupidity, she decided not to tell him about the ex-assassin Mary that had been snuggling up to John in his absence. He could learn that on his own.

 

* * *

 

Sherlock came back in October, but it wasn't until Guy Fawkes' that John forgave him, as much as anyone ever could forgive someone for such a thing. To Moran's surprise, he actually did manage to keep his fiancée, despite Sherlock's reappearance in his life. Mary might have even helped John to forgive Sherlock, since she seemed to like them both. Naturally, the way that this forgiveness happened was as inconvenient as it possibly could be for Moran.

"I don't think this is a good idea, Sabine," Mycroft said. He stood so close to her that his shoulder brushed against hers, both of them staring into the containment cell with blank expressions.

"Yet, I may be the only one to get him to talk. I'm surprised you don't suspect _me_. He is my father, after all."

"Nonsense." The vehemence in Mycroft's voice made her look up. She smiled at him, realer than her normal usually was. He did like her, then. She had always wondered.

"Thank you," she said. She braced herself. "Into the breach," she proclaimed, before opening the interrogation room door and slipping through.

"Ah, so you work here, too." Lord Moran didn't look contrite or frightened. He just looked bored, elegantly sprawled in his chair with his eyes watching her every move.

"Father," she acknowledged, sitting across the table from him and folding her hands in her lap. "North Korea? Really?"

He shrugged lazily. "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time."

That startled a laugh out of her. "Oh, if we were less alike, we really would get along," she said musingly. "Alas and alack, the apple didn't fall far from the tree."

Coldly, he smiled. "Ah, it really didn't."

"I need you to tell us all about North Korea. You must realise that there are no more options left to you, and I sincerely doubt you're loyal."

"Do you really want me to spill all of our secrets?"

She paused. "Just the important ones."

He met her eyes and, slowly, nodded. "Very well."

"Why did you do it?" she asked abruptly. "You must have known that something like this would happen."

He leaned back in the chair, his cuffed hands spreading wide. "I was bored, Sabine. You must know something about that. You had found your own amusements, and I was bored. They asked, so why refuse? Loyalty? That's not what Morans do."

She leaned over the table and kissed him on the cheek. She had never liked him more. "Apple and tree," she breathed into his ear. "Have a good life, Father."

He gave up everything on North Korea, but never said a word about her and Jim. Perhaps he was a decent father after all.

 

**xii. All the King's Horses**

Moran was busy, most times. She kept busy on purpose. With Sherlock back in England, she could be more open about her work elsewhere, and thus even busier. She worked long hours for Mycroft, was simultaneously acting as Moriarty, and she certainly worked as Moriarty after hours. The work did end sometimes, though, despite her best efforts. It had even been ending at reasonable hours as of late. Mycroft had realised there was a leak in the organisation, and may even begin to suspect that it was Moran, because despite his proclamations of faith, things hadn't been quite the same after Lord Moran had tried to blow up Parliament.

When work as both Moran and Moriarty ended-- it was those times when she missed Jim the most. Jim's presence in her flat was something that she had grown accustomed to. There had been the year when Moran was first working for Mycroft, when Jim hadn't been able to be in her flat, before he had thought to make them be engaged. For years before and after, though, he had been with her whenever she wasn't with Mycroft. She lay flat on her back on one of her throw rugs, hair spread out over the floor and fingers linked over her chest.

She was thinking about the time Jim did a domino-effect explosion on a group of buildings in Serbia when her phone rang, Cyndi Lauper's ["Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIb6AZdTr-A)

She pressed the call button and held the phone to her ear. "Hi, Molly."

Molly gave a sharp little gasp. "Oh, hi, Moran. I suppose I'll never get used to you greeting me by name like that-- which is silly, everyone has caller id now on their mobiles, so why don't we greet each other by name? It's strange, isn't it?"

"Molly. Focus."

Laughing, Molly said, "Yes. Sorry, yes. Listen, I know it's late, but did you want to come to mine, have a drink?"

"God, yes," Moran said gratefully.

Moran had arrived at Molly's still in her pajamas. Ensconced firmly on the other woman's couch, they shared a bottle of wine, passing it back and forth freely.

"I had a shit day." Molly's tone was carefully cheerful. "Sherlock was involved with some strange case with gamers, of all things, and he assumed I must know everything about it because I lack a social life, enjoy solitude in a morgue, and wear fuzzy sweaters."

"Those were his reasons?" Moran bit back a laugh even as she wrapped her lips around the head of the wine bottle.

"Essentially. Of course, he wasn't wrong. He's never wrong." Moran passed her back the bottle in commiseration. "I just wish it was harder, sometimes, for him to find the truth. No, that's just cruel. I wouldn't want him to be less than he is. I just wish he had a bit more… kindness, I suppose, in how he goes about it."

"That is the problem with Sherlock, I suppose." Moran laughed suddenly. "The final problem, you might say, and final problems require final solutions. It's why the-- the villains always go after Sherlock's emotions. He keeps saying he doesn't have any, and of course they want to prove him wrong. Or maybe try to make him more like them."

Molly was silent, rising unsteadily to her feet to get some glasses at long last. Moran took the unguarded wine bottle and cradled it in her hands. "It's funny," she continued. "The final solution isn't going to be death, not if what you're after are his emotions. So why bother trying to kill him? It doesn't make sense, does it? There must be a bigger game."

Molly took the bottle from her gently and poured a splash of wine into both glasses. "Moran…," she said hesitantly. "I haven't wanted to say, but I've been…. I thought, initially, that maybe you didn't know that Sherlock was alive. You were… off. You've been off, since Sherlock fell. What happened?"

"You've always been so smart, Molly. Like a sleeper agent."

"What happened?"

Moran sighed, feeling exhaustion down to her toes. She set the wine aside, not really wanting to drink when she felt like this. The time had come, then, for her to choose a lie. "My fiancé... he left. Just before Sherlock fell. I was with him eight years. I was a child, and then I joined the RAF at eighteen, left at twenty-three, and I was with him for eight years." She tilted her head, staring up at Molly. "What do I do now?"

"Oh, sweetheart." As expected, Molly dropped the subject, rushing to pet Moran's head and say sweet nothings into her hair. She was predictable that way. In this case, there was nothing more useful than the truth.

 

* * *

 

The gamers were just one in a string of petty cases that were keeping Sherlock busy and out of Moran's hair. Their paths never crossed professionally anymore, since Moran had been keeping her business assiduously out of London as much as she could. Sherlock deserved a reprieve from Moriarty, since she and Jim had been woven in and out of his cases for years.

Nevertheless, she kept an eye on him. He had a number of powerful enemies out for his blood. Those he had indicted on cases, past and current; his general attitude; his time dismantling Moriarty's network-- all of these had left him with scores of people set on destroying him. Moran had sway with many, but not all, and she had to keep an eye on things because of that. No one was allowed to kill Sherlock except her, and some part of her insisted on saving him for Jim. When she thought about it, the flash drive now in her possession, with its video files, sound clips, and looping, manic, "Did you miss me?" weighed heavily on her mind. So she tried not to think about it and to simply move forward, maintaining her web of connections and guarding Sherlock until her time ran out. She was fighting both Eurus' timeline, whatever that might be, and her own chance of discovery, which crept higher every day due to her increasing workload.

"John and Mary are busy with wedding preparations," Sherlock told her one night, after she and Mycroft had met him by a fleet of police cars at a crime scene. He was standing in the dark alone, his coat billowing around him with the same breeze that whipped Moran's hair into her face and melted her blouse against her skin. Mycroft was already in the car. He was on the phone, and the conversation wasn't one she was allowed to hear, which had been happening more often lately.

"Dreadful thing, weddings," she said, marking a few CCTV files as "all set" with the flick of her thumb. Being busy and suspecting discovery soon was no reason to slack off in the meantime. "They should do what I did and just sign on the dotted line. It's nothing more than a business merger, after all."

"You don't wear a ring." Sherlock's eyes narrowed; he clearly hadn't realised that she had married.

"I am not given to sentiment," Moran said crisply, finally closing out of the CCTV feed.

"Wrong." Sherlock's laser focus fell to her fingers, to her neck, to the run in her stockings and the scuff on her heels. "Hm. I'm sorry for your loss."

"You wouldn't say that if you knew him." Moran laughed, reaching over to pat him fondly on the cheek. "And you picked up on it when Mycroft did not, so congratulations. I think that he had developed a fondness for another woman, regardless."

"I doubt it," Sherlock said, and Moran felt the warm glow of the compliment.

"Flatterer. Now that this case is finished, I have a young man I could send your way-- a friend of an old RAF buddy of mine who spends his time guarding Buckingham Palace. I can promise it won't be dull. Are you interested?"

He was. He always was, and as they parted ways, she made him promise to be good. She suspected she wouldn't see him much in the coming months.

 

* * *

 

Moran didn't miss sex because she and Jim had never been about that. _She_ had never been about that, to be honest. She had slept with men in almost every country she had been because of the power of it, the power in having whoever she wanted. She had slept with Jim because she liked being close to him. She liked to have his attention, his eyes on her, the affection in his lips against her breast. But sex for the sake of sex was almost an unfamiliar concept to her. She used to worry that she was broken.

That was why it was so frustrating when Molly kept trying to set her up. She refused every time, of course. Not only did she not want to do something as ridiculous as _dating_ , but she was _busy_ and had far too much to do to spare the time. That was when Molly had decided to blindside her with this ridiculous double-date.

It was supposed to be just Moran and Molly, having one of their regular dinners where they talked about science and dead bodies. Moran loved those conversations more than she should have, considering that Molly was there to provide her with insight into Sherlock's doings. She loved the talks where Molly told her about the various ways one could lay scalpel to cadaver, and the effects that decomposition had on organs.

What she did not love was this:

"If you do not remove your hand from my leg in the next five seconds," she said pleasantly, eyebrows raised at the man beside her, "I will take this steak knife, skin you, and _wear you as a coat_."

The man spluttered and it took not five minutes for both he and his friend to have something very pressing that required them to leave. Happily, Moran shook out her napkin and picked up her knife. "Men are so stupid," she said, ignoring Molly's gaping mouth. "I don't want to discuss them anymore. That's certainly not why I wanted to meet with you for dinner, and if I had known you were bringing two, I wouldn't have come.

"I _wanted_ to discuss my work today, since there was a particularly interesting diplomatic incident. I can't reveal the particulars, of course, but--" She continued speaking until Molly's face grew less shocked, though the girl remained pensive for some time afterward.

Not a week later, Moran was called into Mycroft's office.

"Please, sit down." He was watching her with the most dangerous look she had seen yet, and as he did, she knew that he had figured it out.

She sat. "Yes, boss?" she said, feigning innocence.

"Let's not play games, Moran."

Sighing, Moran shook her head. "No, I suppose not."

She then said nothing else, linking her hands together and looking back at him. Moran had been Moriarty for too long now, because as Mycroft stared at her, she could feel the edges of a smile, vicious and shark-like, flirting around the corners of her mouth. She realised, in a flash of self-awareness, that she had been trying to get them to this point for years now.

"Don't look so smug, Moran," Mycroft said, but instead of victorious that he had found the leak in his organisation, he sounded tired and worn thin. It was likely that no one could read him as well as she could at this point, after all these years at his side or his back, guarding him from Slavic gunmen and flashing leg and disgruntled political opponents. "I could put you in jail, one of the little ones no one but us knows about."

"No you _could_ n't," Moran said, and she didn't-- quite-- let her voice fall into a sing-song.

"No, I couldn't."

His voice made her want to reach out, comfort him somehow, but she knew that he wouldn't appreciate it.

"How did you figure it out?"

He shook his head. "Although I had been concerned by how Diego Diaz in Barcelona had been managing to evade our MI6 agents and suspected a leak, I did not actually suspect it was you. I had an… interesting discussion with a concerned Dr. Hooper, who managed to piece together a few different slips of the tongue that you had in front of her into a rather terrifying whole, and wanted me to dissuade her."

Moran laughed, admiring. "Molly Hooper." She gave a slight tsk of the tongue. "She's so clever. If she had the nerves for it, you should snap her up for MI6. She's a surprisingly good liar, too. I couldn't even tell that she was figuring it out. Though she connected me and Jim years ago, straightaway."

"Be that as it may--"

"I am loyal to you in my own way, boss. Truly," she said. She drew her lips together as she looked at his grave face, his weary eyes. "If Jim hadn't found me first, I would have been yours, through and through. But…."

"How was he _possibly_ the better of your two options, my dear?"

She couldn't explain it. Being with Jim was like being the hair on the edge of a razor: one slip was all it would take, and he would slice everything apart. And that they were alike that way, that had freed her for the first time since her mother had left the family, or maybe even for the first time ever.

"Do you want to know a secret?" she asked. "One I never even told him."

"You love him." Mycroft's words were not a question.

She smiled, thinly. "I let him put a gun to my head and he didn't shoot. In his own way, I think he loved me back. In my own way, I was loyal to you both." She stood. "I'm trying to stay out of England, more or less, but let me know if any of your business falls in my areas. If I can, I'll try to help, or if your purposes are against mine, try to find an alternate solution for both parties. You will find me more reasonable than Jim. And find someone competent to keep an eye on Sherlock as my replacement. I will, of course, continue that independently." She didn't tell him to keep an eye on Mary. She didn't need to.

"I'll be in touch," she said, and then she was gone. She thought it was particularly sweet of him that no one tried to stop her on her way out.

 

**xiii. Meetings with Villains**

Mycroft took John's wedding off, because despite himself, he was sentimental. Though she no longer worked for him, she still knew everything he did. She suspected that he tried to keep abreast of her doings as well, though she made sure he was kept well-misinformed. He would know of this meeting with Charles Augustus Magnussen in hours, she was sure, since Magnussen liked to play every side possible.

"Mrs. Moriarty," I presume?" Magnussen said, his soft voice crawling into her ears like a spider in the night.

"Just Moriarty," Moran said-- there was no reason to be unpleasant yet. "A pleasure," she said, and gripped his hand. He looked annoyed that she didn't flinch at his clamminess. He was a man who tried hard to be reviled. He took such pleasure in others' pain that he probably would have sickened even Jim.

"And why did you want to meet with me? Are you not supposed to be dead?"

She smiled. "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," she intoned, inviting him to take part in the joke. Obligingly, he gave her a lipless smile in return.

"Very droll, Mrs. Moriarty."

Moran had had lunches with backstabbing high society girls for decades. Magnussen's heavy-handed attempts to irritate her reeked of twelve-year-old girls huddled in a circle, trying to bum a fag from the sixth-formers.

"It's a very important day, Magnussen," she said instead of the response he wanted from her. "I'm sure you're heard that Mary Morstan is to be married. In fact, at this moment, she is doubtlessly married already, and Sherlock Holmes is giving his speech as best man."

"But is that marriage even legal?" Magnussen pondered. His eyeglasses glinted like a cartoon villain.

"And what is legal to people like us?"

"Just so."

"Do what you want if you think you've earned it and all that," Moran said.

"So you've come to discuss our mutual acquaintance, then, Mrs. Moriarty? I didn't know you were that close to the Watsons."

"I have a… vested interest," Moran said, letting her voice dip and linger over the words like a gentle mockery of one of Jim's drawls.

Magnussen sat forward, elbows against his knees and hands clasped over the top of his cane. "You're a curious woman, Mrs. Moriarty. You don't exist, as I'm sure you're aware, and you're difficult to read in person. Almost as if you're fighting between two personalities."

"I'm _so_ changeable," Moran lilted, just a copy of a copy.

"Even your sex. If I remember correctly, you were a man some years ago."

"I really wasn't, and I would know. Do you remember, or were you too focused on Jim? I was there when you met Jim Moriarty. I was there when you met with Mycroft Holmes. I've always been there. In the background." She smiled a little. "Usually, I was texting. You probably didn't notice."

"Like a thief in the night. Was his grave even settled yet?"

"Cremation, you know, so it wasn't a problem. I never even had a chance to see the body. Shame. Jim always enjoyed making a spectacle." She would have killed to see him one more time, but Magnussen didn't need to know that. "The point of our discussion is that I just wanted you to know my interest in the Watsons and the Holmeses is longstanding. You sent Mary flowers recently-- I wouldn't want our relationship to become… complicated."

"Oh, don't deny me my games now." He took his glasses off, deliberately rubbing them clean before putting them back on. "What would your husband think of that?"

No one had ever called Jim her husband before. Moran hated it-- hated the insipid connotation and the image of girls in white dresses that paraded through her mind when it was mentioned. She had married Moriarty because he was going to die, because she needed to cement a partnership. She didn't marry him to be Mrs. Moriarty. How Magnussen had even found the information was a concern in itself; even Mycroft didn't know.

She laughed, burying the flash of hatred. "Careful, careful, Mr. Magnussen," she said. She leaned forward, placing her hand on his. In a whisper, she said, "You know what they say about assumptions, after all." She stood suddenly. "Good day, and keep what I've said in mind, won't you?"

She left with a spring in her step.

A few months later, Mary put a bullet in Sherlock's chest. It never paid to try to do nice things.

 

* * *

 

Fresh from her visit to Sherlock's hospital bed, Mary found herself confronted by a sleek, black town car, glistening wetly from the rain earlier that day. Idly scanning over texts from a Monsieur Duval, who wanted her help on a bit of messy business in the French countryside, Moran saw Mary stop and consider the car thoughtfully. She likely thought it was one of Mycroft's. In fact, she was probably hoping that she could convince Mycroft not to kill her for what she had done. Moran had already set her own plans in motion, however, with the release of a friend of Mary's in a distant Georgian facility. Within the year, Mary would be dead, and good riddance. Mary was mad and lovely, but she was also psychotic and selfish-- she had shot her husband's best friend so she didn't have to stop lying to him. It was a plan worthy of Moran herself, if only there weren't so many holes in it.

Mary got in the car. Moran locked the doors.

"You're very brave," she remarked, looking on benignly as the skin around Mary's eyes grew tight.

"I'm sorry, who are you?"

Moran smiled, setting down her phone. "Sherlock calls me Anthea. He made up the name for me to tell to John."

"And your real name?"

"What is real, Mary Morstan?" She shook her head. "My mother named me Sabine Moran."

"As in, Lord Moran? The same Moran who tried to blow up Parliament for North Korea?"

"My father got into all kinds of trouble. Quite without my permission, but he never did ask my permission about anything. Not my favorite chap, really." In the gloom of the town car, Moran's smile grew thin. Her father was currently rotting somewhere in one of Mycroft's prisons. Moran was still trying to decide if she cared enough to deal with it. Jim was the hacker, not her, and it would destroy the mystique somewhat if Moriarty tried and failed to remove a man from prison.

"And this visit is about… your father?" Even Mary didn't believe that.

"It's about Sherlock."

Mary sagged a little in her seat before straightening, as if it had never happened. Oh, Moran really could have liked her. "Yes, I'm afraid to be the bearer of bad news, but unfortunately it is so." Moran shifted forward on her knees, incongruously clad in jeans instead of the business skirt she would have worn when she was Mycroft's. "I've already warned Magnussen, and now I'm warning you, Rosamund. The Holmeses and I have long-standing business, and I have a prior claim. Don't break what was never yours to begin with."

Mary snorted, eyes sharp. "Prior claim? Then why haven't I heard of you?"

"You have. You just didn't realise the name belonged to me. Don't break Sherlock, Rosamund. I've held him together before, but I can't do it anymore. If anyone kills him, it will be me, and only if absolutely necessary."

"But who _are_ you?"

"An interested party. Now despite what you think, your past is an open book to those that need to know it, and I fear that I won't tolerate this lack of competency that you've been showing." Moran knew that Mary was going to start trying to kill her now, if she could, but she didn't even know who Moran was. "Now, I never liked John, but to hurt John is to hurt Sherlock, and to kill Sherlock is to kill John. And that last one is a warning, in case you didn't recognize it, not a metaphor."

"I gave him a chance to live," Mary protested. "I adore Sherlock."

Moran's smile was patronizing. She barely resisted the urge to pat Mary on the cheek as she said in a rolling drawl, "Oh darling, I don't think you're capable of adoring anything at all. I know someone who would have thought you were _endlessly_ amusing. I, however, am getting bored. Get out of my car."

Mary immediately opened the door and got out, but she paused for a moment before she shut it. "This isn't over," she warned softly. "I won't let anything harm my relationship with John."

"Don't be weak," Moran sneered. "Women have been alone for ages-- you don't need _John_ to make you a real girl. You'll be dead soon anyway. I wouldn't worry about it."

Mary slammed the door shut and stood for a moment, shuddering. Moran leaned back in her seat, [fussing with her phone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDEYu61piI) until she had French rap tripping languidly through the town car. The music began swelling, slowly, with a kind of suspense that Jim would have appreciated.

"The flat in Enfield this time," she ordered the driver, caressing the side of her phone with her fingertip. Mary's perfume made Moran want to gag, filling her nose as she heard, _"Ma raison somnolait. Ma conscience me conseillait, mon subconscient m'déconseillait, mais mon esprit veut s'envoler."_ My reason was sleeping, she translated automatically. My conscience was advising one thing, my subconscious was advising another, but my spirit wants to fly away.

French always made her think of her mother, and of coming to certain conclusions while walking down Parisian streets with a bag full of gun parts, almost ready to come home but not quite. It was funny how she hadn't seen her mother in years, yet some things had stayed with her. The smell of her mother's perfume, her ridiculous advice, her red lipstick-- her insistence that heels were the only appropriate footwear for a woman, which Moran had always taken a particular pleasure in flouting when she could.

("Love twice, marry once," Mother had said. Did that mean that there was hope for Moran yet?)

Jim's phone had never been found, and her calls and texts were never labeled undeliverable. It may be like shouting into the void, but she still found it immeasurably soothing to text him: _You would like Mary Morstan. Even I like her a bit. But she's trying to break your toys. SM_

She paused for a moment as the music rose and ebbed like a tide: _"Stop-- je tisse des liens, j'en perds le fil. Bâtis ma vie, construis dans l'vide. Les gens me disent, 'L'espoir fait vivre.' Comment m'faire vivre? Je suis un zombie."_

Stop-- I weave connections, I lose the thread. Build my life, construct it in the void. People tell me, 'To hope is to live.'-- Moran closed her eyes.-- How do I live? I'm a zombie.

Eyes still closed, Moran wrote, _I miss you. SM_

No one but her had to know that she was texting a dead man. The only one she could have told directly was Jim, of all ironies. She could have found a way to lie and tell Mycroft, tell Sherlock, tell Molly, but that was all closed to her now. There was only Moriarty.

In the Enfield flat, she was Anda Mathers, and she didn't have to worry about being so complicated. It was no wonder Jim liked to be so many people. It was easier to hide from yourself that way.

 

**xiv. Eurus**

Moran had taken a lot of helicopters in her life. She had ridden on or flown them in the war. Her father had sometimes used them for travel. There had been one or two times with Mycroft, and one particularly tense time at Sherlock's side when he had been seizing from a drug overdose. Needless to say, this trip to meet Eurus was Moran's least favorite.

Mycroft had approached her, entering the Belgravia flat for the second time since they had met. He looked no more at ease for the years they had known each other, hands clenching around the crook of his brolly and lips pressed together sternly.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Moran had asked pleasantly. Though her guards had warned her when Mycroft's car first headed her way, she was still caught somewhat unawares. Her laptop was hastily shut, with a quick threat of dismemberment to the Nigerians in case they screwed up their current transaction. [Asia](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDpPoytXVvo)\-- the band, rather, not the continent-- had been turned down, but still murmured in the background as Moran craned her neck in a lazy greeting at Mycroft's entrance.

"Moran," Mycroft greeted. His hands flexed on the umbrella handle, betraying his nerves. "Happy holidays."

Moran frowned. Mycroft had no time for pleasantries, and found them trite besides. "To you as well," she said guardedly. "Do you need Moriarty or Moran?"

He sighed heavily. "Both, to my regret. I would owe you a favour."

"Dangerous words. What will I be doing?"

Mycroft looked at her, obviously fighting with himself, before he finally asked, "What do you know of Sherrinford?"

Moran stared. "You want _me_ to meet Eurus?"

Mycroft sighed, disgruntled. "I should have known you would know of her. So you know why this is a dangerous request."

There were many things that Moran didn't say. She didn't say that Jim had been worse after meeting with Eurus. She didn't tell Mycroft that she wasn't convinced that Eurus hadn't collaborated with Jim in some manner to come up with a plan that involved Jim being more useful dead than alive. She didn't ask why-- why he hadn't told her, why he had given her his empire, why he hadn't stayed. She didn't mention the flash drive locked in a safe in her flat, filled with flickering, laughing images of Jim's face.

"I'm aware of the dangers," Moran said. "When will I go?"

Mycroft smiled raggedly. "You were always short on common sense. If you agree, you'll leave now. I won't be able to come with you. Eurus can become more agitated when I visit, and I will be at my parents' for Christmas besides."

Moran raised her eyebrows at that. Mycroft had worked almost every Christmas she had known him. His mother must have laid the guilt on heavily to get him there for Christmas this year, but perhaps that was due to Sherlock's resurrection. Your son coming back to life might make you want to gather your loved ones to you at the holiday times.

"I'll grab my coat then."

It was a long drive and a helicopter ride before Moran was descending into the depths of Sherrinford, earbuds in, popping bubblegum like any good Moriarty would. She was surrounded by an armed guard that were all terrified already, a burly, staid-looking bunch with crew cuts and fatigues. They reminded her of the dozens of soldiers who hadn't minded a woman soldier, as long as she was willing to smuggle alcohol, fags, and prostitutes into the base. She liked the corruptible ones more than she liked the self-righteous doctors like John, who wouldn't understand a good time if it danced naked in front of him with pasties on.

They left her at the door and she had to enter on her own. Eurus was in a glass cage like a wild animal on display at the zoo, her dark hair a tangled, matted mess that obscured her face. She reminded Moran of the Japanese horror film that Jim had dragged her to see at one point, a well-woman with long hair and vicious teeth.

"So you're the girl Moriarty," Eurus said, voice a surprisingly articulate lilt.

"So you're the girl Holmes," Moran mocked.

Eurus laughed, approaching the glass of her cage with a horror film-like lurch. "Oh, how _defensive_ , Mrs. Moriarty. I only met Jim once, you know. Face to face. We understood each other so well we didn't even need words. You're a little slower though, aren't you?"

"I assume it was time for us to meet, then?" Moran was trying to think of what would have prompted this meeting, any reason why Eurus might choose now to request the flash drive, but couldn't think of anything besides the symmetry of meeting both Moriartys at Christmastime. She had no doubt that the flash drive was the only reason that Eurus had called for her, not that either of them could be so forthright about it under the heavy surveillance. Magnussen had actually been quiet, to her understanding, and Mary had seemed to take her warning to heart and was working with Sherlock rather than against him, not that her changed mind would save her when Moran wanted her dead.

"More than time, don't you think?" Eurus tilted her head, hair falling like a black scarf against her dress. "I suppose I'm the other woman, aren't I?"

Moran grew still against her will, face deadening. "I suppose you are," she admitted stiffly. "Are we done?"

"Hit a nerve, did I?" Eurus licked her lips, her tongue lewdly red against her pale skin and dark hair. "Lovely Mrs. Moriarty. You may leave."

Moran gave a mocking bow and left.

 

* * *

 

After Sherlock had stupidly shot a man in front of everyone that he bloody well shouldn't have shot someone in front of, Moran found herself in Mycroft's flat, dread in her stomach as she accused Mycroft with an acidic, "You're going to kill him."

Mycroft jolted at her voice, obviously not expecting Moran to be perched in the corner of the room near his private cinema room, kicking her legs back and forth like a child. He, carefully, set down his umbrella by the end table. Foolish action, really. He trusted her more than logic dictated he should. She was Moriarty, after all-- he should expect her to be changeable.

"He killed himself," Mycroft said. "Again."

He crossed the room to stare at his film reels, shoulders drawn together under his expensive white shirt. Though his face was turned down, Moran could tell that he had aged decades in the span of weeks.

"You let that psychotic thing marry John!" Being entirely sick of imbeciles, it was frustrating to Moran that Mycroft had decided to join their ranks. "Did you expect Sherlock to not defend John Watson's wife and child if Magnussen was after them, lethally if need be? Magnussen is no great loss to the world, but there were better ways to go about it! If I'd had more time…!"

Mycroft turned about, slamming his hands on the coffee table and snarling, " _Yes_. I did expect that he would use an iota of common sense and not _destroy everything_ for the sake of another human. It's _Sherlock_."

Moran shook her head, moving to walk over to the couch. Once there, she patted his hand fondly. "You never understood that Sherlock is a bleeding heart. Why else would Jim try to burn it out of him? He wanted the two of them to be more alike, so that maybe Sherlock would understand."

Snorting, Mycroft said, "Understand what, exactly? Psychosis?"

"No need to be insulting, sir." Moran had spent three years without Jim now, three years of rebuilding his empire, three years on her own. It had left her with no life outside of the work, no pet projects like Molly left to drink with, no father or social circle she was obligated to, and a constant threat of death over her head. She understood more than she once had. "He wanted Sherlock to understand what it was like to feel so hollow that nothing could fill the hole inside you."

Moran had learned how that felt the moment that Jim had died, and no amount of knowing, no amount of preparation and warning, had kept her from feeling the void in her chest.

Mycroft sighed, turning back to the film reels. He chose one and put it in the projector. It flickered for a moment, and then the glory of GoldenEye was on the screen. The corners of Moran's mouth twitched: Mycroft, liking Bond. Somehow, that made sense in her world.

"This way, he has a chance," Mycroft argued affably. "I can't protect him anymore than I have. Can you?"

"I'm working on it. The people you want to send him to unfortunately want me dead as well. My contacts in Eastern Europe have decayed since Jim died, and I didn't work on them as well as I did on the others. I also had a recent altercation with the Russian mob, and they aren't very fond of me. A minor squabble over the United States."

"Look at us, sharing information for the good of Sherlock." Mycroft's smile is wry. "Are we going to watch movies together and eat popcorn now, like good boys and girls?"

"You mean that sarcastically, but that's my full intention." Where Mycroft was wry, Moran was wicked. What better friend did she have than her former-boss, now enemy? As she settled beside him on the couch, Moran sent another text into the void: _You never thought about collateral damage. That's why you should have told me your plans. That was what I was for. I always saw the long-distance, and knew when the damage was necessary and when it wasn't. SM_

And now, unfortunately, she only had one option left.

 

* * *

 

Moran met Eurus Holmes for the second time in a café in Madrid. For a woman who had been imprisoned for her entire life, Eurus looked well in the sunlight-- pale, naturally, with her long hair held off to the side in a clip. It was easy to see that she was related to Sherlock. Moran had never wanted to talk to someone so little in her life.

For Sherlock.

Instead of being safe and sane, two things that Moran had never been, Moran instead walked over to the little bistro table and sat across from the most dangerous person she would ever meet.

"Well, hello," Eurus said, her fingertip tracing the rip of her coffee cup. This close, Eurus could see that her eyes were the same eerie pale blue shade that Sherlock and his mother shared. "If it isn't the lovely _second_ Moriarty that Jim told me _so_ much about. You're even more lovely outside of prison lighting. Are you sure you never modeled?"

"A pleasure," Moran said simply, not responding to the rest of Eurus' monologue. She caught the waiter's attention and ordered an espresso in smooth Italian. Her mother had insisted on lessons in French and Italian, as if she was a child in the eighteen hundreds, because how else would she marry a foreign prince and inherit scads of money? "Have you been enjoying Madrid long? I know it can be difficult for you to get away."

Eurus smiled, slowly and with a deliberate poison that made Moran shiver. "Not long. I had to arrange a terrorist attack to take up my elder brother's attention-- excuse me, they _do_ prefer to be called freedom fighters, don't they. Not that his attention isn't divided enough, with Sherlock's imprisonment." Her eyes glittered with hatred at Sherlock's name, but Moran couldn't think of that. This was Sherlock's one chance not to die overseas in a suicide mission, if Mycroft had his way.

"The ones I've met, yes." The waiter set down the espresso in front of her and Moran smiled at him in thanks. She had no intention of drinking it, given that she couldn't be sure of how long Eurus had been here and who she had spoken to, what poison she had used. Eurus was as changeable as Jim, and several times more insane.

"Jim was very proud of you, you know? Tremendously fond. Though, I suppose you do know. He married you."

"He made me Moriarty," Moran corrected carefully. "Marriage was the easiest way to do so."

Eurus' eyes widened. She sat back with a delighted gasp. "Oh, you miss him. And you're so angry with him for leaving you-- he didn't even tell you what he had planned."

"Be very careful, Eurus." Moran's hands tightened around the handle of her cup, the band of China pressing white into her palm. "I have been Moriarty for a very long time and I've picked up a few tricks."

"Don't bark at me, Moran. You're clever. Not as clever as me-- no one is-- but fairly intelligent. Certainly smart enough to run a crime consulting business and run it well. I heard you even filed taxes."

"I thought Mycroft would appreciate the gesture."

"That shows some creativity. You have a very specific personality. Contrary, combative. How you were ever a soldier is almost beyond me to understand, but it's best not to lose sight of the inadequacies of those in command at any given moment. I doubt they were aware of the smuggling business you were running on the side, or that you would have far preferred shooting the enemies in the head with a rifle rather than piloting an aeroplane."

Moran had lost the ability to be shocked by those that could read her mind and her personal history without even blinking. "I'll give you the tapes," she said as a response, "but you must use them immediately."

Eurus cocked her head, animal-like, with wide eyes and pursed lips. "Must I?"

"You really must." Moran realised, with a distant kind of shock, that she did not like Eurus Holmes in the least. She had known that she wasn't objectively fond of the woman, but now that she knew her a bit better, she liked Eurus even less. "Not everything is a game, Eurus."

"Isn't it?" Eurus said mildly, poison smile still in place. She reached out and ran her fingers over the scar on Moran's chest, making Moran flinch. "What would you have been without this, without the army? Do you think you would still be who you are today?"

Moran gave her the files and wordlessly got up, espresso untouched. "Good luck," she said. "Don't kill him."

It wasn't long until Jim's face was plastered over every screen in Britain. "Did you miss me?" he crooned, mad eyes, shark smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next and final part is very short, and thus I'll probably post it in just a day or two.
> 
> The line "do what you want if you think you've earned it" is a direct quotation from Maldoror's Gundam Wing fanfic, Freeport. It has stuck with me for years, and I find myself thinking about the sentiments and ideas that she has in that fic quite a bit. I wanted to make sure she was credited.
> 
> GoldenEye is the Bond film with Alec Trevelyan, another 00-agent who betrays MI-6. He serves in some ways as a foil to Bond, and can be considered the "Dark Bond." 
> 
> I realized that I had the wrong link in next chapter-- what was linked as Handel's Dixit Dominus should have been Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2. Fixed.


	4. [Part Four] Fight or Flight?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In real life, nothing is fixed. Nothing is better. Staying alive is the process of making choices, one after the other, until you're somewhere you never could have expected to begin with.

**xv. Stayin' Alive**

It took more time for Eurus' plan to be completed than Moran expected, but to her relief, the madwoman ended up back in her cage. Unlike the Holmes brothers, Moran didn't believe that Eurus would stay there for long. There was undoubtedly another game she had in mind. In the meantime, though, Moran was pleased that the other woman was behind bars and Sherlock was alive. Even better, Moran's work at freeing Mary's team mate in Georgia had paid off, and the woman who had shot Sherlock and caused this entire mess was dead, the boys were back together in Baker Street, and any second now, Moran was expecting to be invited to the nuptials.

Well, perhaps not _any second_ , but still.

When there was a knock on her door that night, it wasn't the Holmes brother she thought it would be.

"Who told you, then?" Moran asked, voice light as she drummed her fingertips against the doorframe. Sherlock tracked the rapid tap of her fingers with his eyes, impassive. "Was it Mycroft? No, he wouldn't have, I'm sure. So you figured it out on your own?"

"No." The answer seemed like it was dragged up from somewhere deep in Sherlock's chest. A smug smile flickered over his face. "Molly."

To her surprise, Moran found herself laughing. She somehow never suspected Molly, and yet dear Doctor Hooper was always the culprit. She widened the opening of the door and stepped back, walking across the floor of her Belgravia flat, her bare toes digging into the plush, white carpet in the center of the room.

Years ago, this apartment had been clean and prim, a peace-offering to a wayward daughter. But she had splashed color throughout the room where she could, and Jim had made her spill wine on the white carpet, almost underneath the couch; she had forgotten to get it cleaned, for all that it might have been a Freudian slip to do so. Similarly, she had dragged herself home from a sniper job in the early years and the rust-brown stains had never, quite, come out of the edge of her recliner. Her father had never had a chance of getting the posh princess he wanted.

[The low loop of her music in the background](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhYxlsH3Jmk) sailed and glided through her ears, soft acoustic crooning. "I always forget about Molly. I was horrible to her, you know." She walked over to the liquor cabinet that Jim had once taken apart and put back together again so that he could use the hinges for one of his little building projects. She had come home to find him with a half-built model train station that was too large for any model trains to actually be in scale with, Jim laying on his back on the floor, reading Kafka.

"Metamorphosis is a fairy tale," he told her, dark eyes cutting to her seriously. "Turning someone to a giant roach? How positively droll." She had rolled her own eyes, taken off her dress, and started dialing for take-away, sitting on the floor next to him in her underthings, his head in her lap.

"I became suspicious. Their one meeting wouldn't have been enough time for Moriarty to come up with an entire plan and recordings for Eurus. Moriarty would have needed to leave those tapes for her either in a discreet location-- possible-- or with a person. I had no idea who. But when I brought this up to Molly, this one niggling detail, she talked about you. She mentioned you had been… friends."

Sherlock still edged around the word like it was a foreign concept. Moran smiled thinly.

"I liked her enough to think she would be a good thing to use," she corrected as she poured herself Glenlivet in a shot glass and drank it back. (Somewhere, Mycroft was aghast at the abuse of good Scotch, she was sure, but Jim was probably pleased. Good things were made to be abused, he said.)

"Like me?"

Somewhere, in his heart of hearts, the heart that Jim had never managed to burn out of him, Sherlock was hurt by this. He thought if it as a betrayal. He thought she had been false to him, played him for years, but it was only playing if it was a game.

"No-ooo," she said, letting her voice caress and lilt over the words in a parody of Jim's affectations. "I am fond of you, Sherlock. I had no idea Jim was after you at first. He wanted me with Mycroft, but didn't tell me why. And then he told me, and made me a partner. Made me Moriarty." She frowned. "No. I made _myself_ Moriarty. I made _us_ Moriarty. He never made me do anything. I tried to keep the business together as he went after you. And then he died." She didn't realize she was smiling a crazed smile for a moment, and after she did, she let it fade. "I could have killed you, but by the time I realised you were alive, you were out of my reach. He was mad about you. Completely mad."

"So you got Magnussen to try to destroy me."

She blinked at that, setting down the bottle of Scotch. "No, you idiot," she snarled. "I decided that if Jim couldn't kill you, no one could." She whirled around and strode over to him, jabbing one of her red fingernails into his chest. "I talked to Magnussen and tried to make him stop pursuing Mary. I had plans into place that would have killed him if you had given me half a chance. But no, you had to be the hero and _shoot_ him. In front of everyone. The witnesses, Sherlock. You can't just ignore witnesses."

He was still watching her without expression. "Who are you?" he asked.

Is he really that stupid? "Oh really. Come, now, Sherlock. I'm Anthea. I'm Sabine Moran. I'm Lord Augustus Moran's daughter. I am a peer of the realm. I'm a soldier. I listen to 'Eye of the Tiger' on repeat when I'm upset and the Bee Gees when I'm nostalgic. I am Moriarty."

"You might pretend to be him," Sherlock said, the slowness of his voice indicating that he wanted his words to cut, "and you might have all the mannerisms and little inflections down, but you're not Jim Moriarty. You're just a little girl playing dress up because her lover died."

She snorted. "Eventually, _everyone_ becomes a parody of themselves, acting on the remembrance of who they were so that they can continue being who they are. Why shouldn't I be him as well as me? Just a copy of a copy." She let her jabbing finger gentle into a hand, linking itself around his wrist as she leaned in to say softly into his ear. "Moriarty lives."

"I will take you down," he vowed, just as quiet as her.

She looked at him, frowning a little as she drew back. "Why? The big, flashy jobs were more of Jim's specialty. I just… consult on the bigger jobs. I gather information. I arrange circumstances and meetings. Essentially, I am doing exactly what I did for Mycroft, but on a larger scale. I am not your nemesis, Sherlock. If I was, I wouldn't have released those recordings to Eurus. You like puzzles. I've already been solved."

Sherlock wilted, just slightly. He's still thin and his eyes are still bloodshot from his entirely too recent drug use, and she remembers sitting with him in the safe house and hearing the name Carl Powers for the first time.

"I'll try to arrange something fun for you," she offered, "but really, much of my work has to do with getting intel from point A to point B, or negotiating between rival gangs in Iceland."

Sherlock turned, coat flaring dramatically behind him, and headed back out the door. "This isn't over," he warned.

She barely resisted rolling her eyes as she sank down onto the couch. The music had died down.

Was she really just a copy of a copy? A poor substitute for Moriarty? A shadow of something that was one great?

She could be great, if she wanted. She could kick the organization back into high profile, reopen connections with China, talk to her old smuggling contacts in the RAF. Jim had died, flashy and loud, more trouble dead than alive, but she could be _remembered_ as much as he was, if she wanted.

But what did she want?

Figuring that out always seemed to be the main difficulty she faced over the years. Her own archenemy was her own inability to make a decision, not Sherlock. She let herself be shepherded from one obsession to the next without ever committing to a choice. The one thing she had chosen herself wasn't becoming Moriarty-- she had chosen _Jim_ , not the title, but he wasn't an option anymore.

A sound broke into her thoughts, and an insistent buzzing. [Her phone was vibrating](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQwNN-0AgWc) on the edge of the coffee table, screen flashing, but it wasn't the ringtone she knew she had chosen last.

As the falsetto vocalizations of the Bee Gees' Barry Gibb swept the room, the croon of "Stayin' Alive" melting into her ears, Moran picked up the phone, and smiled.

"Did you miss me?"

 

###

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't kidding when I said the final part was short, but this is how they ended up needing to be cut.
> 
> This fic is the labor of a great deal of time. Every free second I had for the past few months, I spent writing this fic, editing it, and polishing it so that it could be everything that I thought Sherlock, as a show and a concept, and Moriarty, as a person deserved.
> 
> And then we have Sabine. Anthea is a funny little mystery in a show full of them. She is in the background of so many fics, texting and being beautiful, and now I can't see her in a single fic without seeing her as Sabine Moran also, like a secret we share. The ending of this fic is a little ambiguous, and it is intended to be. I'm honestly not sure whether I think Moriarty "should" live or not, but for those who think that Moriarty living is a cop out-- and for those who love Moriarty and can't bear his death-- and for those who just want Moriarty and Moran to be happy psychopaths in love-- the ending is left open for you. I fall on the side of romanticism, to be honest. I view Moriarty's death as a tragic waste. Some part of me wants and needs to fix it for him, because he was so brilliant and his character arc had so much potential and depth and unsolved mystery-- and then it ended. But in regards to this fic, Moriarty needed to die in some way for Moran to come into her own. If he does live, Moran has some tough choices to make, but whether you think he lives or not is up to you.
> 
> I may dabble in this universe again, but this story stands complete as it is: Moran has the entire world open to her, as long as she has the courage to take it. (And knowing her....)


End file.
